Second Place Winner, October 2003 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

Filed In:

Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Second Place Winner, October 2003

THE CAMP
Marty Abuloc
(Wild Poetry Forum)

I

An old man speaks

Let them feel the pang of hunger.
Lead them here
those who now sleep in the softness
of pillows and mistresses,
those who day by day wear
comfortable clothes,
and shiny shoes,
those with Rolexes, and cars
and mansions.

Let them take the path the children walked
just this morning, bellies full
of ceaseless hunger.
Let them feel the grass blade cutting
the skin from their legs as they run
in rice paddies, forest, city streets.
Let them scream
under a hail of bullets.

II

In Manila, a child asks

Grandpa, what are those?

“Ah, fireworks, child.
Just fireworks
over at Mindanao.”

They are pretty.
Look, is that a house burning?

“Not a house, child, just straw
made into a hut fit for burning.
See, it burns bright
and crackles!”

Aren’t those children, grandpa,
there by the fringes?

“Yes, child, and their parents too,
watchers, admirers of the view.”

But they have tears, grandpa.

“Child, it’s the smoke.”

They look sad, grandpa, are they sad?

“Can one be sad at fireworks, my child?
It’s best that you sleep now,
the show will be over soon.”

The senator yawns,
scratches his ass,
and turns off the TV.

III

Malaria Quarantine, Refugee Camp

Leaning toward the earth,
a child settles down to rest

under a vast sky
of red dreams

waiting for the flight of wings.

Judge Wayne Miller’s comment: “I don’t usually find myself drawn to political poems. I tend to agree with Kenneth Burke, that the goals of political language and poetic language are relatively antipodal. According to the poet Martha Collins, who has written several fantastic political poems, what makes a good political poem work is that it remains driven by language, not by a desire to relate a political argument or ideology. In other words, it’s poetic, not overtly rhetorical. And ‘the poetic’ is what I find throughout much of ‘The Camp,’ despite its political themes. The incantatory curses cast upon the rich in the first section, create a rhythmic pulse, and the voice here claims a real poetic authority. Then the poem takes an entirely different tack—a call and response between grandfather and grandson as they witness violence occurring just off the poem’s stage. Though I’m not fully persuaded by the final tercet of this section, I find the grandfather’s evasions haunting and real. And finally, the poem lands us in that spare, ambiguous image of wings—an airplane’s or perhaps a death angel’s, we don’t know—hopefully coming to take a boy away from a refugee camp. This ambiguity deftly drives home the poem’s argument.”