1.Roads clog with people in vehicles crossing the Golden GateGive my rage back to me, I know how to hold itGhost fog grows and stretches itself through the bars and I’m ready for itOn my radio, the white general and the white generalyank each other into the deep end, good heavensDon’t teach me to hate my language tonightDon’t teach me how to hate my lips and their language tonightTongo says capitalism walks on water, I’ve seen my TV, I believe itAll of the redwoods in the world can’t keep this country from wanting to dieThe future has arrived and it’s doubled overand the best of us are ready for love though we’re burning2.Roads clog with people in vehicles crossing the Golden GateMy family is Eduardo and Mitsuo and Marilyn and Almaand Samuel and Fumio and the twin who drank himself to deathand the auntie who drank herself to deathand the Issei and the Nisei and the Sansei with their rock faces and nightmaresUndisguise me, said the stoneUndisguise me, said the stone to the desert lightUndisguise me, said the stone to the riverLay me down under harsh water flowing under midnight starlightTake my face off of my face, said the stone, shake me open3.Roads clog with people in vehicles crossing the Golden GateThe white general and the white generalteach me how to hate my language on the radio tonightWhich nightmare of a framework makes the human countWhich bodies count and which count againstGrandma met Grandpa in those campsLet me give your rage back to you, said the poemStop trying so damn hard, said the poemEverything that has ever happened to you and your familykeeps happening and the love keeps coming in with its surgeryGet good with yourself, said the poem, get gone
Theses on the Philosophy of History
or Listening to the Presidential Debate While Stuck in Traffic
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- August 13, 2023
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“Theses on the Philosophy of History” from UNDER A FUTURE SKY: by Brynn Saito.
Published by Red Hen Press on August 15, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Brynn Saito.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Brynn Saito’s third book of poems, Under a Future Sky, will be available on August 15th from Red Hen Press. She’s the recipient of the Benjamin Saltman Award and her poems have appeared in the New York Times and American Poetry Review. Brynn teaches in the MFA program at California State University, Fresno. She’s co-editing with Brandon Shimoda an anthology of poetry written by descendants of the Japanese American / Nikkei incarceration, forthcoming in 2025 from Haymarket Books.
“The stark beauty and physicality of the Arizona desert, where Saito’s paternal grandparents were imprisoned during World War II, are ever-present in her latest book. Using the framework of letters to and from her father and other family members, she honors the ‘riverstream of ancestors’ and, in a celebration of ghosts, recovers stones for the living. Saito’s fearless entry into her ‘gate of memory’ is a radical guide for us all to make meaning from the past.”
—Amy Uyematsu, author of Basic Vocabulary
“Brynn Saito writes with a rare, inimitable grace in her most personal and politically engaged book to date. The epistolary poems for family and the impact of internment and inheritance are imagined with music and wisdom. I feel more alive after these poems and her reminder, ‘Beautiful prayer animal, rise to the occasion of your living.’ Under a Future Sky is a masterpiece.”
—Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower
“Through gorgeous epistles to family, friends, and even a dragonfly, Brynn Saito quests through the Western landscape and questions the past. She searches the animal of the body, each cell an intergenerational archive, and finds ‘who you’ve been can no longer carry you. / That is the miracle.’ Lyrically lush and deeply wise, this book is both an intimate portrait and a summoning, a chance to hunt memory and recover history, still burning, still stone.”
—Traci Brimhall, author of Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod
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