I Talk to Grandpa by kristel

HOME → BAMBOO SHOOTS LISTING → I TALK TO GRANDPA

BAMBOO SHOOTS
Works of fiction and poetry by friends of Bamboo Ridge Press.

KRISTEL

I'm socially awkward. http://www.kristelyoneda.com

THIS IS A YEAR OF THE DRAGON CONTEST ENTRY

I Talk to Grandpa

Published by KRISTEL | Thursday, July 19, 2012 10:32 PM

This is a July Year of the Dragon 100-word contest entry. 100 words. Sometimes I miss being a kid.

I talk to Grandpa,
but he never answers back.
Mommy says he can hear me even though he's not here anymore.
I don't know what that means,
So sometimes I talk really loud.

Grandma still makes him dinner,
but I don't know how he eats it.

"Moah," she says. "Grandpa like plenny rice."

I give him a big scoop,
the kind that falls off the paddle.
She sets down his plate at his altar and prays.

Sometimes I lay in his room when it's hot.
I press my face against the carpet and
The house moves like it's exhaling slowly.

RECOMMEND THIS PAGE

Tell others about this page on your social networks.

COMMENTS

GUEST (75.82.68.71) - Wednesday, October 03, 2012 5:11 PM. You have such a talent! I am Becca F. from Yelp. I am sharing this with my pals! It is wonderful!
kristel - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 6:42 AM. Thank you, Monica's friend in Japan! Very nice to meet you :)
GUEST (180.44.186.250) - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 10:02 PM. beautifully written! Love it. (I'm Monica's friend in Japan, and am gonna follow you!)
kristel - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 6:41 AM. Thank you! Grandpa also used to get beer with his dinners, but I was too young to pour it apparently lol
appleblossum - Monday, July 23, 2012 11:59 AM. I love this, especially that Grandma gets a bog scoo of rice. :)

GUEST (75.82.68.71) - Wednesday, October 03, 2012 5:11 PM.

You have such a talent!

I am Becca F. from Yelp. I am sharing this with my pals! It is wonderful!

kristel - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 6:42 AM.

Thank you, Monica's friend in Japan! Very nice to meet you :)

GUEST (180.44.186.250) - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 10:02 PM.

beautifully written! Love it.

(I'm Monica's friend in Japan, and am gonna follow you!)

kristel - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 6:41 AM.

Thank you! Grandpa also used to get beer with his dinners, but I was too young to pour it apparently lol

appleblossum - Monday, July 23, 2012 11:59 AM.

I love this, especially that Grandma gets a bog scoo of rice. :)

POST YOUR COMMENTS

From:	If you have an account, why not login?
Comment:

JOIN BAMBOO RIDGE ONLINE

Are you an aspiring prose writer or poet? Want to hone your writing skills by getting feedback from other writers like yourself?

Why not join our online community?

JOIN US ON FACEBOOK

Become a fan of Bamboo Ridge Press.

FEATURED ISSUE

The Nanjing Massacre: Poems
ISBN: 978-0-910043-88-5
ADVANCE COPIES AVAILABLE AFTER MARCH 1, 2013! THE NANJING MASSACRE: POEMS offers us a series of snapshots of human cruelty, courage, and compassion that together compose a frightening yet accurate and unforgettable portrait of a historical nightmare. Like Goya’s prints in DISASTERS OF WAR, or Ian MacMillan’s prose sketches in PROUD MONSTER, Wing Tek Lum’s poems confront readers with fully realized vignettes of brutality, love, and suffering whose effect is cumulative. The subject is the notorious Japanese occupation of Nanjing, China, in 1937. The poems capture all perspectives of the tragedy—from the weary, casually cruel Japanese soldiers to the uncomprehending child victims, and from the desperate helpless parents and the brutalized comfort women to the bloodless yet vicious bureaucrats of death. “Too often history is written by those who survive, those who won,” Lum writes. Drawing on published histories, memoirs, photographic collections, and oral histories, he composes testimony after testimony for the silenced—poetic memorials that also provide some measure of revenge against the victors. At key moments, he also broadens the frame of reference, linking the crimes in China to the atrocities committed since then at different times, on different continents. Massacres, Lum suggests, bear a family resemblance—the human family. But THE NANJING MASSACRE is much more than a chamber of horrors. Lum’s spare and meticulous verse offers up vivid, memorable, and even beautiful images, and many of the poems are mini-narratives, suspenseful and compelling. The result is a gallery of disturbing portraits that nevertheless move us through their artistry and truth. —Craig Howes Director, Center for Biographic Research University of Hawai‘i at Manoa "Please do not bury me. I will awake from my sleep at my chosen moment..." So in Wing Tek Lum’s chosen moment—the Nanjing Massacre—both literature and history are dangerously awakened. Epigrammatic, elegiac, and luminous, these poems beckon the buried voices of daughters and sons, husbands and wives, soldiers and survivors— Chinese and Japanese alike. This masterful and courageous collection allows us to breathe deeply over the shallows of history and to under- stand, through poetry, how “the truth shall set us free.” —Russell C. Leong, Contributing Editor, AMERASIA JOURNAL . . . a striking volume of poetry. The poems, intelligent and at times brutal, provide both kaleidoscopic slices and a vast panorama of the tragedy. The magnitude of the poetic vision and effort is simply overwhelming. —Ha Jin, author of NANJING REQUIEM, WAR TRASH, and WAITING . . . [a] masterpiece, written over a span of fifteen years. Sustaining an unwavering vigilance on events of incomprehensible human suffer- ing is an affirmation of the poet’s unflinching regard. These stark and steadfast poems resolve to dig deep for the antidote—our capacity to love—transforming what continues to arise repeatedly in this world of cruelty and indifference. By summoning courage these poems demand that we face the unpleasant, stripped of delusion, and find deserving of our compassion the unacceptable. —Cathy Song, author of CLOUD MOVING HANDS and THE LAND OF BLISS Wing Tek Lum’s poems are deeply moving and extremely imaginative. Bridging literature and history, they bring the past back to life and of- fer one solution to the almost impossible task of recovering lost voice and experience where no historical records exist. —Daqing Yang, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, George Washington University These poems are not your standard polemics. Lum, who possesses a master’s degree in divinity, writes not just as a poet of witness but as an ascetic seeking to evidence the torment of the world . . . there is a strange way that fact and opinion fall out of Lum’s deeply historical poems like light falling through a pane of glass. —Ken Chen, Executive Director, The Asian American Writers’ Workshop History is not poetry and of course poetry is never history—and yet, Lum has fused the two with skill, sensitivity and fury. This brilliant collection that is based on documents avoids agenda, although Lum is necessarily partisan in addressing the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens and disarmed soldiers by the Japanese. This six-week period in 1937 is still being disputed by some who would rather not foul Japanese history any further. Others prefer to forget. Lum resuscitates various sides with renewed blood and soul, invigo- rates dry record . . . is unflinching in his art. —Kimiko Hahn, author of TOXIC FLORA Lum observes the killing fields, the eponymous Nanjing Massacre, stares directly at the slaughtered remains, the historical evidence, and you may well ask why. As tribute to Iris Chang, whose own tortured experience and suicide gives pause: yes. To prod a litany of human di- sasters, Shoah, Congo, Sabra/Shatila, My Lai, Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Jenin, Homs: no problem. But I think it’s more for company, to join the other messengers in God’s waiting room, awaiting reprieve. Have a seat. —Jeffery Paul Chan, author of EAT EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU DIE

BAMBOO SHOOTSWorks of fiction and poetry by friends of Bamboo Ridge Press.