Bopomofo Abecedarian [of the bomb]
by Kathyrn Hargett-Hsu
Bomb: from the Latin “humming”:
of Greek imitative origin.
Putonghua: (we were here first): 炸弹.
To place a bomb in each village child’s
mouth, & slick even the dreamed tongue
with gunpower: 狂轰滥炸:
firebombs blazed frenetic & indiscriminate;
the villagers scamper—(& used in some
dialects to describe
a market stampede.) We were
the first bombing people, & we bombed
ourselves: thunder crash bombs
gnarled together with cast iron, harvest-incinerators,
audible from thirty miles away.
Linguistically, we bodied the bombs,
gave the bombs mouths & eyes:
if the bomb fails
to kill, the bomb is 哑 or 瞎.
Our bombs were fire crows,
fire drakes, flying over enemy lines
to inflict divine, medieval
justice. (& of course,
our share of pear-flower
guns, crouching tiger
cannons, bombs named after
stars.) Eight hundred years later,
the bombers had ladies’ names:
Sally laid the general’s thesis over
Chungking—Lily swept it
over the civilians—Peggy
sharked the civilians, bare-assed,
across the city’s stairs.
If you look close at the campaign,
you won’t see my auntie—at least, not
in the photo record. All I know is her
thin leg, divorced from her hip,
called her death into an air raid’s roster.
She was a child. What a joke
to say a bomb is a woman or a divine crow.
They could only bury the leg of their
de-eyed girl, lost in the strategically bombed.
Was it Chungking or Shanghai?
No one remembers.
Maybe it was Chongqing.
Bomb: from the Latin “humming”:
of Greek imitative origin.
Putonghua: (we were here first): 炸弹.
To place a bomb in each village child’s
mouth, & slick even the dreamed tongue
with gunpower: 狂轰滥炸:
firebombs blazed frenetic & indiscriminate;
the villagers scamper—(& used in some
dialects to describe
a market stampede.) We were
the first bombing people, & we bombed
ourselves: thunder crash bombs
gnarled together with cast iron, harvest-incinerators,
audible from thirty miles away.
Linguistically, we bodied the bombs,
gave the bombs mouths & eyes:
if the bomb fails
to kill, the bomb is 哑 or 瞎.
Our bombs were fire crows,
fire drakes, flying over enemy lines
to inflict divine, medieval
justice. (& of course,
our share of pear-flower
guns, crouching tiger
cannons, bombs named after
stars.) Eight hundred years later,
the bombers had ladies’ names:
Sally laid the general’s thesis over
Chungking—Lily swept it
over the civilians—Peggy
sharked the civilians, bare-assed,
across the city’s stairs.
If you look close at the campaign,
you won’t see my auntie—at least, not
in the photo record. All I know is her
thin leg, divorced from her hip,
called her death into an air raid’s roster.
She was a child. What a joke
to say a bomb is a woman or a divine crow.
They could only bury the leg of their
de-eyed girl, lost in the strategically bombed.
Was it Chungking or Shanghai?
No one remembers.
Maybe it was Chongqing.
Kathryn Hargett-Hsu 徐凯蒂 is an MFA candidate in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, Belgrade Art Studio, and UAB. Most recently, she received the Barksdale-Maynard Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the 2021 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize. Her work appears or is forthcoming from TaiwaneseAmerican.org, Cherry Tree, Best New Poets, The Adroit Journal, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere.