Poem of the Day
The People’s History of 1998
By Gbenga Adesina
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve / and wanted vengeance.
The bullet has almost entered the brain:
I can feel it sprint down the gunbarrel
rolling each bevel around like a hoop
They called it a landslide as though
everything shifted and the weak
and strong alike were buried alive.
This cemetery is no haven,
old Jews waving at you
offering Kaddish for a few dollars,
The wind is against us and the ash of war covers the earth. We see our spirit flash on a razor blade, a helmet’s curve. The brackish springs of autumn salt our wounds.
We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
I didn’t write Etsuko,
I sliced her open.
She was carmine inside
A man once rode away on a yellow crane,
leaving only this empty pavilion.
Once gone, the yellow crane never returns;