I IMAGINE FIRST LEAVING THE HOSPITAL

by Ying Wu

A wounded 6-year-old girl arrived at a hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, on Sunday. Her mother wept outside the ambulance. Her father was at her side, covered in blood. The family was at a supermarket on the outskirts of the southeastern port city when Russian shelling started, according to the Associated Press. Now, a medical team was racing to save the young girl's life. "Take her out! Take her out! We can make it!" a hospital worker shouted. They placed her onto a gurney and wheeled her inside, where doctors and nurses fought to revive her. But she could not be saved. A doctor who was pumping oxygen into her looked into the camera of an Associated Press videojournalist in the room. "Show this to Putin," he said. "The eyes of this child, and crying doctors." Photo credit: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP —CNN, February 28, 2022

You step on the sidewalk.

 

Life breaks into pieces.

 

There are segments and thresholds.

 

Your child collapsed

when the missile exploded.

 

Your heel strikes the pavement.

 

Her body is there at the hospital, still—

but now, you’re outside.

 

Life crosses thresholds.

 

When your child was born,

you tasted forever.

 

But the sidewalk is sectioned.

Today, all the sections seem smaller.

 

Life is unknown.

It breaks into pieces—

 

and the space between heel strikes

can swallow you whole.

Ying Wu is a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego and executive editor of the Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual.  More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry & Art San Diego, Serving House Journal, Writers Resist, Poetry Pacific, and The New Verse News.  Her work is also featured in a permanent installation at the  San Diego Airport.  She leads research on insight, problem solving, and aesthetic experience and lives with her husband and daughter on a sailboat in the San Diego Bay. 

THAT MUCH IS NOT ENOUGH

by Ying Wu

The Taliban fired shots into the air to disperse crowds who had gathered for a rally in the capital, the latest protest since the Taliban swept to power last month. Photo: EPA via Aljazeera, September 8, 2021

Smoke burns our throats in Sacramento.

California is on fire.

Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban.

I stare into the ashen sun,

and think about the ones who fled—

songs and stories ripped asunder,

flames howling at their doorsteps—

and the ones who couldn’t get out in time—

how beneath this very sun,

some tried to flee, but did not escape—

and the dreams of a generation

annihilated before our eyes—

and the dreamers in hiding,

and the women sent home.

 

I want to revel in the splendor of the Siskiyous,

but everywhere is haze, shrouding

the sugar pines and ponderosas—

Mt. Shasta erased completely—

and the sun the color of pink lemonade.

 

Near Ashland, we hike a quarter mile

across dusty, red lakebed

overgrown with cocklebur.

I want to camp beneath the shady oaks,

but the campground’s closed,

and the spigots, shut off.

I want to play guitar

in my folding paisley camp chair,

but a suicide bomb in Kabul has ripped

through the crowds at the airport gates.

I want to swim and shiver and splash

even here in this shrunken reservoir,

but the mud is too thick,

and the water, stagnant—

and the airlifts are ending,

and the bathrooms are locked,

and the treasury is bankrupt,

and the paddleboats, beached—

and thousands have fled,

but millions can’t leave.

A hot, dry wind rustles

the golden grass of August.

What awaits the women and girls

Of Afghanistan?

 

Women have their own rights,

the Andar district governor tries to reassure,

but his words burn in my ears

like the smoke in my lungs from

the massive infernos

engulfing our mountains.

It has rained at the summit of Greenland’s ice sheet

for the first time in recorded history.

Wells have run dry in central Texas.

 

The UN “highlights the urgency of climate change,”

a Louisiana senator tries to reassure. 

“But we must avoid policies that rely on…increased regulation.”

How much Islam has given rights to women,

the Taliban tries to reassure,

we will give them that much.

 

That much.

They’ll give women that much.

While our leaders avoid policies

that rely on increased regulation.

They will give us that much.

While the fires are raging.

 

Ying Wu is a cognitive scientist at UC San Diego and executive editor of the Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual.  More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry & Art SanDiego, Serving House Journal, Writers Resist, and Poetry Pacific.  Her work is also featured in a permanent installation at the  San Diego Airport.  She leads research on insight, problem solving, and aesthetic experience and lives with her husband and daughter on a sailboat in the San Diego Bay.