Tag: 1950

Dictionary, 1950 by Gail Thomas

~ ONE ART ~ 1 Comment

Dictionary, 1950

The year I was born
Orwellian, McCarthyism and brain-
washed darkened the air
as the H-bomb hatched. Post-
nuclear declared, we’re done.
Beautiful people with spray
tans sought head shrinkers
and homosexuals were booted
to funny farms. Post war boom
birthed suburbs, the charge card
and money market. Even BLT
and DJ joined the rush to normalcy
while LSD and DWI said
not so fast. Don’t make a federal
case out of it, we’re just antsy,
kvetching, bugging out.
Don’t blame us, we’re busy
making a baby boom.
Don’t blame us, it’s them
with a switch knife, zip gun,
assault rifle. Wait, we need
to protect ourselves
from ourselves.

*

Gail Thomas’ books are Trail of Roots, Leaving Paradise, Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies including CALYX, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Cumberland River Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal. Among her awards are the Seven Kitchens Press A.V. Christie Award for Trail of Roots, the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press for Odd Mercy, the Narrative Poetry Prize from Naugatuck River Review, the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s “Must Read” for Waving Back, and the Quartet Review’s Editor’s Choice Prize. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Ucross, and several poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She teaches poetry with Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshops, visits schools and libraries with her therapy dog Sunny, and works with immigrant and refugee communities in Western Massachusetts.

Photographs from 1950 by Eric Pak

~ ONE ART ~ Leave a comment

Photographs from 1950

When I was just a boy, before the first bullets flew at Osan
and children waded through rubble to school, my father
always told me stories of how recruits metamorphosed
into iron soldiers. How they bore chests embellished by
medals and wore boots that gleamed under the moon. He
told me he knew a private who was just seventeen, a young
man with wide shoulders and a fire in his eyes. His parents
shipped him off to Osan to honor the family name. After four
weeks, the boy returned with sunken cheeks and cracked lips,
fingers corroded by ice. His parents showered him with Poppies
and spooned him ginseng until he’s bereft of small joys.
Months later, father and the boy would fight in the Battle of Seoul
where the boy’s corpse would return in a coffin of threads.
Sewn shut as the wood peeled away under December frost.
For a year, the village mourned with shards of ginseng.
The other parents drank themselves dry,
before sending in their sons.

*

Eric Pak is a 17-year-old Korean-American living in Thailand. He has lived in diverse countries around the world and aims to share his experiences through his writing. His works have previously been published in K’in Literary Journal, The Paper Crane Journal and The Cathartic Literary Magazine. In his free time, he likes running and eating enchiladas.