A Safer World Than This

On moving slowly and deliberately

Dear Reader,

When my heart is heavy, I move slowly. My heart has felt like a boulder, lately.

In early March, we put out an open call for poetry by Asian poets. We stand against rising acts of violence against Asian people, and we wanted to uplift the voices of Asian poets. We wanted to read broadly, about heritage, culture, history, genealogy, survival, or just being. Poet Stephanie Niu sent in a historically significant and profound poem, below, about the Chinese laborers at Christmas Island, a territory of Australia.

And then, the Atlanta spa shootings happened.  

In memoriam: Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yue.

The poet Yun Wei wrote, "The difference between a bullet and a chisel is time." In her treatise below, she writes about how the violence of a mass shooting cannot be dissociated from the everyday violence of racist comments and erasures. The deaths of six Asian women cannot be separated from the overwhelming reality of racism, sexism, and classism. Hatred pulled the trigger.

Days later, a mass shooting in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.

In memoriam: Eric Talley, Rikki Olds, Kevin Mahoney, Lynn Murray, Denny Stong, Teri Leiker, Tralona Bartkowiak, Jody Waters, Neven Stanisic, and Suzanne Fountain.

And the calls for gun reform, which the majority of Americans have supported for years, is again a fervent plea. Will politicians act? Now, when Democrats control both the White House and both houses of Congress? Now, when compromise across parties may be possible? Isn't now the time for a common-sense act of conscience? 

We need a safer world than this.

Below, encounter stirring work by the aforementioned poets, alongside Heidi Seaborn’s unpacking of misogyny and Tammy Bendetti’s take on Colorado.

Take care,
J Spagnolo
Editor-in-Chief
Poets Reading the News

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Stones Between the Toes, I Walked

Yun Wei

trying to hold my body in the shape of a canvas,
a wind sail, trying hard not to look so breakable.


Tomorrow a man will buy a gun


Two weeks ago I was a konnichiwa.
Tonight my shoes say nihao, too pretty for a Chinese.
Eight blocks it takes me to shake him.
He tells me it’s a privilege to be wanted.
I could be burned from head to stone
and still: they would call it desire.

Tomorrow a man will walk into a spa


Keys ready at the knuckles, I walked,
feeling the hot stones in my pocket,
             of two weeks,
             one year
             twelve,
             a hundred ago,
from when there were murrum roads,
lignite burned to soft coal and still: these streets
are not mine, the thing with concrete is
it doesn’t dent. You don’t have to ask what hurt me.


Tomorrow a man will kill six Asian women


The difference between a bullet and a chisel is time.
No one will tell me when the night ends.
Even the man I love doesn’t know why
I rage, why I crush the things I should have said
in my sedimentary mouth, why I wreck everything
just to leave a dent the length of a small key.


Tomorrow a man will be believed


Tomorrow we dive through the wreckage
and the roads will be poured in, broken in, made of us.

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Gun

Tammy Bendetti

My children play
the Quiet Game.

My elder daughter,
whose magic tricks
still require us
to look the other way,

is teaching her smaller sister
to fold into a closet
and be silent as the dead.
“Pretend there’s a bad guy,”

she says, “with a gun.”

.

In the dark I dream a trap,
and then, an escape
from one danger to another—

barefoot through snowbanks
into the mountain town,
to ask for help—
but find myself outcast.

When somehow I return,
armed,
to confront my captor,
I feel the Glock in my hands,
much more solid than hope.

.

In the morning, dewfall.
In the morning, blood.

My town is half-masted,
and we step into our tired roles:

Police with adrenaline
coppering their breath.
The desperate medics.
The wounded, grief-wounded,
the heavy dead.

We are the watchers.
The politicians perform the liturgy
for us on television.

This is call-and-response:
each question answered
with another question.

Their flag pins and grave faces
help us know they are sincere.
They wash their hands.
We wash our hands, too.

The largest flagpole in town
stands in front of the truckstop.
It’s bare today, an obelisk,
bone white.
It seems respectful.

It seems like raising
its bright banner again
is a kind of magic
trick
requiring us all
to look the other way.

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At the Top of the Hill, Unnamed Graves of Workers They Didn’t Bother to Carry Down

Stephanie Niu

The only island cemetery is nearly at sea level.
Sprawling, littered with frangipani flowers
and feral roosters, it gives the non-living a seat
to gaze out at the sea. When the waters finally
rise over the cliffs, the dead will be the first
to drown, we are sure of it, as we watch other islands
prepare to dredge their graves. Even still: what privilege
to have the earth remember your name. Of course the body
decays– how easily hands turn into dirt in this humidity,
release their bones and nitrogen to nourish
the stands of papaya trees. A headstone is only a home
for a name. A memory. It says, I lived once.

The Chinese men who worked the phosphate belts
had names and bodies deemed unworthy
of remembering. We call them workers. Laborers.
Named only for the days they spent brushing
precious white powder from the island’s limestone teeth.
The elaborate system of belts and carts efficiently
wheeled the phosphate down, no room left
for the worked-through bodies. Instead, they collected
in a miners’ grave. Separated from the other dead.

We know so little about them. Only enough
to say: They lived once. Thank you. It was here.

---

Hey

Heidi Seaborn

apple, ass, anchor,
bitch, blonde, bombshell, beauty, babe, baby, blossom, bug, bird, bubblehead,
child, chick, creampuff, cherry, cookie, cock tease, cunt,
darling, dear, dog, daddy’s girl, dirty girl, demon, divorcée, dangerous, drug,
evil, exotic, everything,
fix, fling, flower, femme fatale, floozy, fox, fondle, fuck
girl, goddess, gift, gal,
heart, heartache, headache, hottie, honey, honeybee, heaven, hard-on, hellcat,
ice queen,
jewel, juice, joy, joke, jam,
kittycat, kid, kiss,
lady, lazy, loose, love, lover,
mistress, maid, momma, mother, Madonna, mouth, mink,
narcotic, nurse, nutcase,
oyster, oh baby,
pearl, prick tease, plump, pin-up, prostitute, prize, pushy
queen, quest,
royal pain in the ass, rape bait, raw, romp,
sexy, skirt, shag, screw, smooch, smokin’, spank, sport, sugar, sweetheart,
tits, tart, tease, temptation, trifle, tail, thing,
ugly
vagina, valentine, virgin, vow, vixen,
whore, woozy, woman, womb, wet, wild thing,
x as in x-rated, x-ray, my fuckin’ ex,
you,
zero

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