Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Rei Eden

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

***

A Kaiju comes to the Pacific Rim
by Rei Eden

so this is the
Taiwan Strait
one foot
on a Chinese aircraft carrier
my head
flung backwards in the spray,
hair, seaweed trailing off a plank
into the sea
the jets taking off
and landing
over the sacred burial islands
of my eyes

Moloch
rises from the pacific horizon
like the robotic Kaiju Asshole
he is, where Ginsberg last
vomited him
over the side of a Navy Skipper's thigh -
     pistons for cocks, eighteen miles high
and growing as he arrives, wifi towers
oven eyes, Chinese tinsel planes
crushed like Kabuki Kamikazes
into his blazing steel mouth

I'm reaching out my foot
     for a hold on the Ryukyus
I'm reaching out my hands
     to the Okinawa beach

I'm praying the body
     into a pontoon bridge
I'm praying the body
     into the last escape route

I'm turning my huge head
     to that nasty robot face
I'm turning my sacred eye
     to that nasty robot toupee—

Moloch's got Taiwan sun bears in its black acid stomach
Moloch's got Taroko tripping cogs in its intestines
Moloch's lost Tainan due to indigestion
Moloch's just eaten Hong Kong Taipei and Hualien
            …now Moloch's got Seoul in its
tiny left hand
            …now Moloch wants my cunt in its
 paw-like right—

my cunt in this water must become a mountain.
my cunt in this water must become a monument.
my cunt in this water must become
            the only bridge.

[Previously published at whoathererei.wordpress.com]