poem: History Project

April 13, 2011 by Kathy 5 Comments

History Project

at fifteen

I decide

to do my history project on nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands

time to learn my own history, I decide

I weave through book after

article after

website

all on how the US military once used

my island home

for nuclear testing

I sift through political jargon

tables of nuclear weapons with names

like Operation Bravo

Crossroads

and Ivy

quotes from generals like

                90,000 people are out there.

               Who

                cares?

 

I’m not mad at all

really

I already knew all of this

I glance at a photograph

of a boy, peeled skin arms legs suspended

a puppet

next to a lab coat, lost

in his clipboard

I read first hand accounts of what we call

jelly babies

tiny beings with no bones

skin – red tomatoes

the miscarriages gone unspoken

the broken translations

                I never told my husband

                I thought it was my fault

                I thought

                                there must be something    wrong   

                inside me

I flip through snapshots of American marines and nurses

branded white with bloated grins

sucking beers and tossing beach balls

along our

shores

and my islander ancestors

crosslegged before a general

listening to his

fairy tale

bout how it’s

“or the good of mankind

to hand over our islands

let them blast

radioactive energy

into our lazy limbed coconut trees

our sagging breadfruit trees

our busy fishes that sparkle

like new sun

into our coral reefs

brilliant

as an aurora borealis woven

beneath a glassy sea

               

                                God will thank you

they told us

yea

as if God Himself ordained

those powdered flakes

to drift onto our skin our hair our eyes

to seep into our bones

we mistook radioactive fallout

for snow

God will thank you they told us

like God just been

waiting

for my people

to vomit

vomit

vomit

all of humanity’s sins

onto impeccable white shores gleaming

like the cross

burned

into our

open

scarred palms

At one point in my research I stumble

along a photograph

of goats

tied to American ships

bored and munching on tubs of grass

At the bottom a caption read

Goats and pigs were left on naval ships as test subjects.

                Thousands

                of letters flew in from America

                protesting

 

                animal abuse.

 

At 15

I want radioactive energy megatons of tnt a fancy degree

anything and everything I could ever need to send ripples

of death

through a people

who puts goats

before human beings

so their skin

can shrivel

beneath the glare of hospital room lights

three generations later

as they watch their grandfather their aunty their cousin’s life drip

across that same black screen

knots of knuckles tied to steel beds

cold and absent of any breath

but I’m only

15

So I finish my project

graph my people’s death by cancer and canned food diabetes

on flow charts

in 3D

gluestick my ancestors’ voice

onto a posterboard I bought from office max

staple tables screaming

the millions of dollars stuffed

into our mouths

generation after generation after generation

and at the top I spraypainted in bold stenciled yellow

FOR THE GOOD OF MANKIND

and entered it in the school district wide competition called

history day

My parents were quietly proud

and so was my teacher

and when the three balding white judges finally came around to my project

one of them looked at it and said

Yea…

but it wasn’t really

for the good of mankind, though

was it?

And I lost.