You were born in the cold black heart of the Cold War, under the fist of
Eisenhower, under the satellite eye of Mother Russia—1960 America.
Chinese Year of the Rat. U-2 Pilot Gary Powers forgot to **** himself.
Space Race Baby looking up at stars she does not comprehend—
the world is big, the sky is bigger—Shhhhhhhhhhh: huddle under your desk in case a big, black, bomb falls down and burns you so bad you feel nothing but cold
cold cold;
huddle inside yourself in case your plane is shot down over Soviet soil
and everything turns to red, turns to blood, turns to your fingers shaking and your eyes stinging, and you think about that time when your mother told you about the Year of the Rat being associated with white,
with the Chinese color of death. You think: This is it. There is where it ends,
but this is not it; this is not the end. You will die in a hospital bed
in 49 years, so just give it some time, alright?
Khrushchev and Eisenhower can play Tug-of-War and
Vietnam can burn in the meantime.
Mother, when you were born you could not breathe. Mother,
when you died it was because you could not breathe. Mother,
when you are not here I think of Gary Powers not having time to press “Self-Destruct,” of the Year of the Rat
choking to death on
Lily of the Valley,
of learning how to talk to the 58,286 dead Vietnam War soldiers. I want to
know what it is like to look up at the sky and fear a missile strike smack in
the middle of winter. I want to know how cold the Cold War felt to you in
the Chinese Year of the Rat, and what he felt when U-2 Pilot Gary Powers
fell like
Lucifer
into the arms
of Mother Russia.
or “The Zodiac Symbol of the Dead”
written for my foundations of creative writing class. this is an experimental villanelle.
