 |
| Eviction of Nikkei from Bainbridge Island, March 1942. Image source: Friends of Minidoka. Most of the Japanese-Americans interned at Minidoka were from Seattle and Bainbridge Island as well as Alaska and Oregon. Many were housed in a temporary camp at the Puyallup Fairgrounds. They were then sent by train to the Minidoka Center. The Minidoka Relocation Center was on 33,000 acres of unused federal land in Jerome County, in south-central Idaho located on the north bank of the North Side Canal providing water diverted from the Snake River to vast irrigation tracts. |
It surely won’t be as bad as people say.
The news plays on our fear, exaggerates.
It’s not like they’ll be marching us away.
It’s not like he made lists of who will pay,
who said he’s a fool the public overrates.
It surely won’t be as bad as people say.
He wouldn’t dare to bundle us like hay,
mark those who wear hijab, open the gates,
rounding them up and marching them away.
It doesn’t matter if you’re straight or gay.
He can’t determine rights by who one dates.
It surely won’t be as bad as people say.
The checks of government will keep at bay
his burning ego and his raging hates.
It’s not like they’ll be marching us away.
Ignore the knocking. It’s just another day.
Don’t be afraid of how he celebrates.
It surely won’t be as bad as people say.
It’s not like they’ll be marching us away.
Michael T. Young's fourth collection The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost was published by Poets Wear Prada. His chapbook Living in the Counterpoint received the 2014 Jean Pedrick Award. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Chaffin Poetry Award. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals including The Cortland Review, Main Street Rag, Off the Coast, Peacock Journal, and The Potomac Review. His work is also in the anthologies Phoenix Rising, Chance of a Ghost, and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. He lives with his wife, children, and cats in Jersey City, New Jersey.
