Origin

Through darkness they came,
             covered in ash, scarred by depths

and distance, they bore salt and fire, breath steaming
             at edges of decks, hands clutching

railings, their bodies dizzied by the lurching vessel,

             trunks pulled by hand, Where are you from? I unwrapped
my legacy from cloth, the marble Buddha

             from my grandfather, ancient
as the sea-stained covers of his sutras, the briny odor

             of carp centuries old. What are you?

Not only where they were from but who they were
             and would become. His strange

past and the mystery of my own face, American?
             this question flawed as we all

appeared, my grandfather's birthplace the half of me

             I lightened, bleaching my black hair
to reach my girlfriend Amber's blonde.

             In her candlelit room, I touched
the mission photo of her

             rubbing ointment on the burns

of a hibakusha. Where are
             water-filled troughs and the horses' manes

my grandfather combed. The hay he bundled
             in twine, you from? Could he have smoothed names

engraved in granite, the scars on the woman's skin, targets

             raised on maps? In a light blast What are a city
of nips was erased, you? A blank scape, Go back

             no trace of his childhood farm
in Hiroshima, to where I turned

             away from the chalkboard scrawled

with Enola Gay, you are a button pushed,
             from a bomb dropped, at Amber's picnic

             they bowed over grace, and I looked up, didn't
say Amen. Everything rises

            when the ground's skin is broken.