Orbit: The Asian American Issue
Volume 15:3, Summer 2014
Memo (About Ordnance)
The biodegradable bomb
causes no collateral
damage if left
unexploded
in a field
when the war ends.
Raindrops
will strike the
material into
effervescence
and farmers can
till again assured.
In this age
of restoring science
flying cars and
sequestering carbon
at a healthy clip
we should devote
resources
to the unpleasant
but necessary task
of assuring our weapons
supply, that it keeps
to current ethical
standards, that future
killing by the State
will be precise, targeted,
not tied to elections
in this country or abroad,
and biodegradable.
Fire Department
Where is your village?
Burning.
Where is your village?
Mined fields.
Where is your village?
Blasted in crossfire,
wounded under
jungle trees.
Where is your village?
Running across
marshes, shot
in the back.
Where is your village?
Waving white flags
frisked, registered,
supervised in a camp.
Where is your village?
Blowing up army
friskers,
other villagers.
Where is your village?
Toronto, Berlin,
Tamil Nadu.
Where is your village?
Madagascar as option
has not been discussed.
Where is your village?
Hasta la vista,
Special Envoy!
Where is your village?
Burning.
Indran Amirthanayagam writes poetry in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He is the author of twenty three books of poetry and poetry in translation, including Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia, Blue Window (Dialogos Books) The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press 2020),Coconuts on Mars (Paperwall, 2019), Uncivil War (Mawenzi House (formerly TSAR), Canada, 2013), and the Paterson Prize-winning The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose, 1993). Amirthanayagam is a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts fellow in poetry, and a past fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly; curates the reading series Poetry at Beltway Editions, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions. He serves on the Board of DC-ALT. His blog is http://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com