Brown Dusty

This is a poem about the grandfather I've never met. I once heard he served as a medical officer in the Korean War, was captured as a POW in North Korea, and assumed dead. Two years later, he dramatically reappears back to his wife who somehow knew to wait for him. Decades later, my grandmother passes away and now I hear that he lives alone doing God-knows-what in the suburbs of L.A.

One reason why I decided to come to Hawaii was so that I could hear his version of this story. But for now, this is how I imagine it.


he sits
in the room

where brown arrests
the rising dust

and sunlight breaches
the curtain's pores

behind horn-rimmed glasses
his eyes trickle

the resin of memories
in unison with

the beats
of faucets

Haraboji sits alone
with the single photograph

he owned
of her

he smiles
remembers her charm

her voice
how she flirted, poked,

groaned
to take more pictures

Now he tries
to reclaim years

of lifted hands
and tones

which once
demanded silence,

singing penitence
in his fingertips

on the glossy lamination.

despite death certificates, chanting
gowns of white,

medical diagnosis,
and the goodbyes,

he wonders if this is why
she hasn’t returned

the photograph quivers in osteoporosis
hands and wilting skin

recounting folktales of a soldier
suited in uniform for his country

and love for his wife
memories waving out the side

of a departing train
that coughed like a smoker naïve

to the dangers of cancer and widows
to the fields outlining the curves

of disease
where war is no medal or glory

but a scorched
tongue

screaming bloody gunshots
and shrapnel

lapping the life
of newly born fathers and husbands

Minutes earlier, he applied words to patch
her leaking fears and hurts

"One year from this day,
I'll come back for you."

but it had already been two
and she held

wet bandages
waiting in dusty brown rooms

despite death certificates, chanting
gowns of white,

grainy powder,
and the goodbyes,

she waited for him to return