Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry

Issue 3 | Summer 2011

Dear Empire,

These are your inquests. We have found evidence scattered throughout the sands, little scabs of metal here and there. Beachcombers slice their feet, making the map of the land a painting wreathed in fury.

And the yellow caution tape clicks its tongues at us. It is a little brat; its ribboning wills stretched out from one end of the beach to the other.

There is no one here to handle the minesweepers. They are afraid and their emptiness is a domed ceiling. By week's end the tides will carry it all out—the blood and the steel. It will look like a mind firing.