Poem for Friday

Hiroshima Exit
By Joy Kogawa

In round round rooms of our wanderings
Victims and victimizers in circular flight
Fact pursuing fact
Warning leaflets still dip down
On soil heavy with flames,
Black rain, footsteps, witnessings –

The Atomic Bomb Memorial Building
A curiosity shop filled with
Remnants of clothing, radiation sickness,
Fleshless faces, tourists muttering
"Well, they started it."
Words jingle down
"They didn't think about us in Pearl Harbor"
They? Us?
I tiptoe around the curiosity shop
Seeking my target
Precision becomes essential
Quick. Quick. Before he's out of range.

Spell the name
America?
Hiroshima?
Aid raid warnings wail bleakly
Hiroshima
Morning.
I step outside
And close softly the door
Believing, believing
That outside this store
Is another door.

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Daniel is finished with summer health class, though he won't get his final grade till his final exam and group project are graded...in other words, now he is on vacation, at least for a couple of weeks! He spent the morning studying while Adam and I bought our penguins Japanese tea rooms and arcade games. Then, after a lengthy California Tortilla vs. Chipotle debate by the boys, I unilaterally announced that we were going to CalTort because it was closer and easier to park right nearby if it started to rain again, and we had Tex-Mex for lunch.

Then Daniel had a four-hour late afternoon class, so Adam went to the pool after some further developments in the lost-neighborhood-cat situation (there's a crazy lady with a garden that has been throwing rocks and trying to poison the cat -- she put out water laced with Clorox -- while the rest of the neighbors are trying to coax the cat into a Humane Society trap so it can be checked for a microchip, since it looks like a Maine coon and there's a missing Maine coon a few developments over. The cat is terrified -- with a psychotic neighbor trying to kill it, who can blame it -- and the woman who has been putting food out for it has called a lawyer. So it's a stressful situation.

Union Mills scenery:















I happily watched the Sotomayor news, then watched the TNG episode I need to review tomorrow, and then we watched Due South's "Witness" -- they just do not let up on the women, do they? This time it's the police chief explaining to Fraser that the problem with women in authority is that they smell good, and both the female judge and female D.A. being characterized as bitches-who-secretly-need-to-get-laid. No wonder Fraser would rather be in prison with Ray, even though prison is remarkably free of sexual predators -- it's only women who are scary in that regard -- and even though Elaine is the reason Ray can get anything done. I definitely find the level of misogyny disturbing no matter how much I like the male characters. I fear much worse from Eastwick.