If you don't get the historical references, research the Rape of Nanking. It'll blow your fucking mind, I promise you.

Yellow to Red

How do you turn a Yellow River
red?
Build a boat fleet of bodies,
Blood for ballast.
Launch them a thousand at a time.
A trail of crimson sediment –
It seeps slowly
and crawls.

How do you turn my yellow flesh
red?
Tear it open.
Bayonets break bone
Easily.
Fathers forced to rape daughters
An iniquitous landscape painted by soldiers’ eyes.
A stain spread
through history’s bedsheets.
An ugly red splotch on a
nightmare timeline.
The walls of Nanking are still falling.

How do you turn my yellow flesh
red?
Whitewash.
Makeover.
Coverup can’t hide this
blood throbbing, accumulated.
A heavy blush.
Decades heavy.
Corpse heavy.

If a moment is forgotten,
Does it ever really end?
Open mouth, stifled scream.
A slaughter forgotten, yet
younger than my grandmother.
If a girl never stops running,
If a soldier never stops killing,
Can a rape go on forever?

10/13/05
For Iris Chang

Hey guys!

First new post in a while. I'll put a new poem up soon, I PROMISE, but you have to promise to come see me at my featured reading at Expresso Joe's in Keyport! It's located here: 50 W. Front St., Keyport, NJ 07735.

The reading is on Sunday, November 13 from 3-5 PM. I'm somewhere in there with a 15 minute slot. Come by. Check it out. :)