Ishle Park - Korean American poet from New York

Trying this poem on for size: "Open Letter to the Girls of Soldiers", by Ishle Yi Park

Hello, you. Ladies turned
Lovely with longing.

I want to talk to you intimately –
About the shadow of war across your front lawn,
The hours spent captive in front of the tv,
The shape of your arms & his arm entwined
Like yellow ribbons in sleep.

At night you lay with the boy
Who plays soldier by day.
He has tousled your hair,
Perhaps cried into the sink of your collarbone,
You know his fumbling fingers,
The ox of his torso,
And you know
How desperately
He wants to be a hero.

The night is moonless in both countries,
Looted of its stars. Only your eyes, hard, unblinking.
There, bombs weep like thunder and bullets, like a hard, hard rain.

I will not ask you to cry
For other women, turning in bed,
Craving the almond scent
Of their own men,
Throwing prayers
At a noiseless, foreign god,

Your sadness has its own small orbit –
One man, marching out like an ant
With his tiny helmet
Into a horizon of bleak, orange dust,
Into a land where his tongue is dust,
Where the planes and the motives
Of his home country
Fly miles over his head. He is there
To follow orders, to be a hero, to try to be a good man.

What can we do then?
I ask you, with empty hands.
I speak to you, as a woman
Who also loves a boy soldier, a boy man.

What can we do then?
We who wait like pebbles – small, hard, shining,
We whose mouths
Stay speechless as ripped pages,
When all we want to say is –
Undo the yellow ribbons
And the lust for larger freedoms
Or kingdoms – stop the failed war
And bring us back our beautiful, flailing men,

Before our lives spilt apart like frayed rope,
Before war invades the fragile country of our bed.

Maybe at night
We should coax a rebellion,
Whisper to him to shoot in the wrong direction,
Hide under covers –

Tell him:
There is no wind & song
When you die a young legend.

Yes, this is a love poem
Tucked inside a war poem

For women, left with love bites,
Bruises, roses, babies, and longing stretched longer than any flag.
For men, who tuck our best wallet-sized pictures
Under their heads, to angel them, to soak in all of their untold dreams.

For lovers,
Who loose letters like paper doves
Over oceans in a wide, white arc, to land safely in a lover’s palms –
Words on wings, trembling, and waiting to be
Unfolded.