MAYDAY

At the Memorial Park by Kirby Wright

Contributed By:

I bring yellow heliconia and red torch ginger.
You’re planted on a rise beside the shower tree.
Diamond Head looms in the background.
You’re too low to see the ocean.

You’re planted on a rise beside the shower tree.
Show people you love ‘em when they’re alive, you said.
You’re too low to see the ocean.
I was your nightmare: a law school flunk out.

Show people you love ‘em when they’re alive, you said.
You haunt me more than mother.
You’re too low to see the ocean.
Chan Yang and Fu Chuan Lee flank you.

I fill your vase to the brim.
Diamond Head looms in the background.
A plover lands on your marker.
I bring yellow heliconia and red torch ginger.

Return to table of contents for Issue 6 Fall 2012

Filed Under: Poetry

Further Reading

ORPHANS OF PROGRESS: Workers and Political Discourse in Post-Socialist China by William Hurst with performance photography by Han Bing

From soon after his founding the Republic until the end of his tumultuous tenure as President of Indonesia, Sukarno was widely known as the dalang, or puppet master, of Indonesian politics.  “Bung Karno” skillfully played off militarists, Islamists, and communists in a manner reminiscent of the puppeteer’s balancing of competing forces to maintain order in the […]

from Leafmold
by F. Daniel Rzicznek

Blue jays peel out their autumn / tongues for you. Juncos plunge from winter feeders just to / crack their wings in your presence. The bodies show no / bruises yet are broken all the same.

Savage Summer
by Cameron Shenassa

My mother always worked, so in summers she’d drop us at the head of the river, where we’d put our tubes in the water and float back into town, free to spend our days however we pleased. Sometimes we got out of the water, hauled our tubes up the bank, and bought orange sodas at […]