By Amy Uyematsu, Tamiko Nimura, and traci kato-kiriyama
As we survey the past year of lockdowns and quarantines that started here in the States by mid-March 2020, we take stock of a wide spectrum of revelations and experiences over the last twelve months. From new personal practices and experiments in the arena of safer-at-home, to illness and loss, further exposure of inequities and suffering, uprising and reckoning, community unlearning and building – we share the works of two artists who give us a glimmer of their lives through poetics about this last year, oriented to the pandemic. Veteran author Amy Uyematsu returns to the column with just a few of her many poetic contemplations from over the past year, and Tacoma-based writer and public historian Tamiko Nimura shares with us a piece from last March and a fresh reflection one year later… enjoy.
— traci kato-kiriyama
Homebound Haiku
Unstoppable spring
burst of green on bare branches
virus without bounds
Which is scarier
bullets, viral pandemics,
a mob ruled by fear
No time to prepare –
a self-absorbed president’s
lies and excuses
Pandemic or not –
the White House sees dollar signs
downplays human life
Still taking our walks
we are struck by the orange
of this spring’s poppies
Now that you stay home
I am cooking up a storm
our waistlines thicken
Is it only me-
the clouds are more beautiful
a stranger’s smile too
What deadly choices –
not enough ventilators
who’s more deserving?
The streets so quiet
no children at the playground
but the bluest skies
How to stay healthy –
Netflix, old books, new poems
sustain that deep breath
No more Zumba class –
so last night I shut my door
cha-cha’ed my heart out
A two-month lockdown?
Grandpa confined at Gila
three relentless years
I used to teach math
but it took a pandemic
for graphs to take hold
Exponential curves –
once incomprehensible,
now daily fixtures
These are the hard facts –
I’m older than 65
may not make the cut
Left in plastic bags
on the streets of Ecuador
unthinkable end
Find a way to smile
look at something beautiful
all the while grieving
The cruelest spring –
we watch the rising death toll,
cherry blossoms too
*This poem is copyrighted by Amy Uyematsu. It was first published in “Eastwind ezine” (April 4, 2020).
In the Eighth Month of Quarantine
— Now the time has come
There’s no place to run
Chambers Brothers, 1968
:
in this blur
of hours
no special
calendar dates
a few weeks
from fall
I have all
my life
to gaze
at this
shuttered light
the play of
afternoon shadows
and retreat
to the drone
of a summer fan
:
I’ve had close calls
the scariest
a cancerous tumor
in my right breast
I even convinced myself
I was ready
in my early sixties
not knowing
I’d say hell no
a decade later
how different the view
with two grandsons
:
now this feeling of being
trapped against our will
or
choking for air
pandemics
police brutality
a planet on fire
this furiously uncertain now
*This poem is copyrighted by Amy Uyematsu (2020).
When All They Can See Is Our Eyes
More than 3,000 hate incidents directed at Asian Americans nationwide have been recorded since the start of the pandemic…
—CBS News, 2/25/21
Sixty years ago I knew the danger
of walking past white kids my age
who would sneer and glare
and pull up their eyes –
still so young, I
was relieved if they didn’t
also yell “Jap” or “Chink”
In World War II propaganda
Americans were told
how to differentiate
loyal Chinese citizens
from treacherous Japanese
like my California-born parents
locked up in camps
“How To Spot a Jap,”
a U.S. Army pamphlet
in comic book style,
explaining that “C’s eyes…
have a marked squint”
while “J has eyes slanted
toward his nose”
In 2020 the pandemic
brought our eyes
to the forefront again
as President Trump kept
blaming anyone Asian –
proclaiming the “China virus”
or even “kung flu”
No coincidence
we soon became scapegoats
strangers yelling
“Go back to China”
when we’re Korean
“Infecting and disgusting”
though Pilipino or Thai
In 2021, covid still raging,
a Sacramento teacher
lectures via Zoom –
“If your eyes go up, you’re
Chinese” she gestures,
“If they go down,
they’re Japanese”
As the racist bullying
now escalates to our elders
a grandmother assaulted
and robbed at an ATM
an 84-year-old fatally
smashed to the ground
by a 19-year-old
To those who insist making
“slanty” eyes is harmless fun –
“Can’t you Asians
take a joke?” –
whether Miley Cyrus
or Houston Astro
Yuli Gurriel
No such thing as
a little racism – so-called
innocent teasing
and taunts transform
in an instant to
this all-too-familiar
avalanche of hate
Where attacking us for
our Asian eyes
is as American as
“Japs Must Go” signs,
slanted vagina insults,
the Chinese Exclusion Act
as far back as 1882
*This poem is copyrighted by Amy Uyematsu (2021).
Bad Poems
March 2020, for Abby
I knew it was getting real
when I started writing bad poems—
in my dreams, even worse.
Me, the fallen-away poet,
who left the laser precision,
the X-ray vision,
the truth-telling lighthouse of poetry.
I thought I’d broken free to roam
into acres of meadows in prose,
wandering essayist streams,
wide open prairies of fiction,
horizons like novels.
But, no. I slept. I dreamt. I was writing bad
poems,
in Times New Roman no less—
even worse, I confess,
with those magnetic poetry kits.
I was writing poems,
trying to assemble words into dutiful
lines,
and I knew they were bad.
Even magnetic, the words did not move.
When I woke up, I knew that poetry
was calling me back.
It wasn’t just the music.
It wasn’t just the rhythm.
It wasn’t just the image.
It was the power of poetry’s intention,
of poetry’s insistent attention.
My bad poems were telling me
that it was time.
The pandemic, then the panic erupted, went
endemic in my dreams.
If I couldn’t let them out,
the stories I was telling
would not move,
would not go viral,
could not become
vital.
One Year Later
March 2021
One year later
I am dreaming in
restrictions
I am teaching.
(I no longer teach.)
There is a country club
off campus,
there is a classroom,
gray carpet,
white walls,
white lights that buzz.
I have forgotten
the lecture I’ve written.
I have sent my husband
home for notes.
I do not even know
what
I was teaching.
The students
are lounging on couches,
blankets pulled over
their faces.
Once retrieved,
my notes
do nothing
for memory.
After
glancing
at them,
I do not
remember
the words
I have written.
I cannot speak.
The next night
I am missing.
Parties, and readings,
and meetings, and gatherings.
Epic Asian American potlucks.
I am telling my mentor
all of this,
how much
I am missing.
We’re sitting,
facing each other.
A picnic table,
sunlit green trees.
“Then write,” he says.
“Would you like to write
for an hour? With me?”
Above us,
the branches are stirring.
A wind is picking them up, gently,
letting them down, gently.
Then I am running
down wooden stairs
for my wide-lined notebook,
waking up to see.
*These poems are copyrighted by Tamiko Nimura (2021).
Amy Uyematsu is a Sansei poet from Los Angeles. She has five published poetry collections with her latest manuscript, “That Blue Trickster Time,” due out in 2022. Amy co-edited the widely-used UCLA anthology, “Roots: An Asian American Reader.” A former public high school math teacher, she currently leads a writing workshop for the Far East Lounge in Little Tokyo.
Tamiko Nimura is an Asian American writer living in Tacoma, Washington. Her first book is “Rosa Franklin: A Life in Health Care, Public Service, and Social Justice” (Washington State Legislature Oral History Program, 2020). Her second book is a co-written graphic novel, “We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration” (Chin Music Press/Wing Luke Asian Museum, May 2021).
traci kato-kiriyama is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer/author, actor, arts educator & community organizer in Los Angeles. She edits the “Nikkei Uncovered” poetry column on Discover Nikkei, where this column first appeared.
Editor’s notes. “Variety” magazine (Mar. 23) reports “3,795 incidents submitted to Stop AAPI Hate between March 2020 and February 2021.” Readers impressed with Amy Uyematsu’s haikus might try writing their own (see Calendar, p. 4, Haiku contest).
