University (SU).
In 2005 he and two SU colleagues co-edited the book Community and difference: teaching, pluralism and social justice, Peter Lang Publishing, New York. It won the 2006 National Association of Multicultural Education Phillip Chinn Book Award. In July of 2010 his book of poetry entitled, A Cold Wind from Idaho was published by Black Lawrence Press in New York. His poems appear in Ambush Review, Raven Chronicles, New Orleans Review, Floating Bridge Review, Black Lawrence Press website, Poets Against the War website, Cerise Press,Nostalgia Magazine, Plumepoetry, Malpais Review, Zero Ducats, Surviving Minidoka (book), Meet Me at Higos(book), Minidoka-An American Concentration Camp (book and photographs), and the Seattle Journal for Social Justice.
In addition, eight of his poems were interpreted in a 60 minute dance presentation entitled, Minidoka performed by Whitman College students in Walla Walla Washington (2011).
Please check out his latest book
Glimpses of a Forever Foreigner: Poetry and Artwork Inspired by Japanese American Experiences
WWII Route to Freedom
Idaho does not accept our dead.
Twin Falls mortuaries
turn away Minidoka Japanese.
Dr. Abbot calls Aunt Amy’s time.
Medics in whites gently slide
her from the bunk
for a journey to Salt Lake City,
first excursion outside prison gates.
Cousin Hisako snatches
shadows passing in her dreams.
Don’t worry, Amy
whispers,
tell Tetsuo I am fine.
Tetsuo, her son, a U.S. soldier,
volunteers from Minidoka
to defend freedom in Europe.
He takes aim and blasts a padlock,
gates of Dachau swing open.
Nazis have no coal,
crematoriums silent,
odors of death permeate the air,
something like a mixture
of chocolate pudding, urine,
feces and rotting meat.
Naked bodies stack
like tangled tree limbs,
pungent fluids trickle down drains.
In Minidoka coal rages in potbelly stoves.
When did we hear of crematoriums?
It seems we knew.
It seems we always knew.
When our boys came home
we knew for sure.
WWII Route to Freedom
appears in Raven Chronicles, Volume 19, Winter 2012-13.
― Lawrence Matsuda
They Turn Their Eyes
Away
Minidoka barbed wire
snags hope like tumbleweed.
One thousand miles away
Shoichi Okamoto, at Tule Lake California*
twists and falls, a bullet in his head,
cost of disbelief of a guard.
The soldier walks free,
fined a dollar for “unauthorized use
of government property”.
Wind blows alkaline dust
through the tarpaper barrack.
Bachan prays for
freedom,
strikes her singing bowl.
Minidoka crumbles in her dreams
when black rain splatters Hiroshima
and sunlight sparkles silver
through thin barrack doors.
Freedom will not be open arms
and welcome banners.
Red rose petal showers
reserved for real
Americans.
We are the vanquished foe
walking thorough the victor’s lair,
gauntlet of 1000 eyes.
Anxious to pass unnoticed
in our yellow skin,
we will turn away from
Remember Pearl Harbor
remarks.
Mushroom clouds inhabit
the irises of our eyes.
_______
* Japanese American
Concentration Camp during World War II
They Turn Their Eyes
Away appears in
The Seattle Journal
for Social Justice , Volume 11, Issue 1, Summer 2012. Seattle University School of Law.
― Lawrence Matsuda
WRITE YOUR POEM:
Pablo Neruda wrote love poems. Pablo Neruda wrote about justice. All of his poems had an inherent transcendental beauty. There is no way to get around the political nature of certain poems. If your poems inflame the hearts of the majority then you're poems bring crowds and applause. If your poems inflame the hearts of the minority then you are ignored until lines get drawn. He succeeded with love poems as a young man. He had to flee as an old man.
Write your poems. Write for transcendent beauty. Notice everything around you. Ignore the audiences. Beauty brings about a reaction. Be willing to stand in your own beauty.
Leave me a place underground,
XXVI From: ‘Las Piedras del Cielo’
Leave me a place underground, a labyrinth,
where I can go, when I wish to turn,
without eyes, without touch,
in the void, to dumb stone,
or the finger of shadow.
I know that you cannot, no one, no thing
can deliver up that place, or that path,
but what can I do with my pitiful passions,
if they are no use, on the surface
of everyday life,
if I cannot look to survive,
except by dying, going beyond, entering
into the state, metallic and slumbering,
of primeval flame?
