History Project

At fifteen I decide

to do my history project

on nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands

time to learn my own history

 

I weave through book after article after website

all on how the US military once used

my island home

for nuclear testing

I sift through political jargon

tables of nuclear weapons

with names like Operation Bravo

Crossroads

and Ivy

quotes from american leaders like

                90,000 people are out there. Who

               gives a damn?

 

I’m not mad

I already knew all of this

 

I glance at a photograph

of a boy, peeled skin arms legs suspended

a puppet

next to a lab coat, lost

in his clipboard

 

I read firsthand accounts

of what we call

jelly babies

tiny beings with no bones

skin – red tomatoes

the miscarriages gone unspoken

the broken translations

                I never told my husband

                I thought it was my fault

                I thought

                there must be something   

                wrong   

                inside me

 

I flip through snapshots

of american marines and nurses branded

white with bloated grins sucking

beers and tossing beach balls along

our shores

and my islander ancestors, cross-legged

before a general listening

to his fairy tale

bout how it’s

                     for the good of mankind

to hand over our islands

let them blast

radioactive energy

into our sleepy coconut trees

our sagging breadfruit trees

our busy fishes that sparkle like new sun

into our coral reefs

brilliant as an aurora borealis woven

beneath a glassy sea

               

                                God will thank you they told us

 

yea

as if God Himself

ordained

those powdered flakes

to drift

onto our skin hair eyes

to seep into our bones

 

We mistook radioactive fallout

for snow

                                  God will thank you they told us

like God’s just been

waiting

for my people

to vomit

all of humanity’s sins

onto impeccable white shores

gleaming

like the cross burned

into our open

scarred palms

 

at one point in my research

I stumble on a photograph

of goats

tied to American ships

bored and munching on tubs of grass

 

At the bottom a caption read

                Goats and pigs were left on naval ships as test subjects.

                Thousands

                of letters flew in from america

                protesting

 

                animal abuse.

 

At 15

I want radioactive energy megatons of tnt a fancy degree

anything and everything I could ever need

to send ripples of death through a people who puts goats

before human beings

so their skin

can shrivel

beneath the glare

of hospital room lights

three generations later

as they watch their grandfather/aunty/cousin’s life drip

across that same

black

screen

knots

of knuckles

tied

to steel beds

and absent

of any breath

 

But I’m only

15

 

so I finish my project

graph my people’s death by cancer

on flow charts

in 3D

gluestick my ancestors’ voice

onto a posterboard I bought from office max

staple tables screaming

the 23 millions of dollars stuffed

into our mouths

generation

after generation

after generation

and at the top

I spray painted in bold stenciled yellow

FOR THE GOOD OF MANKIND

 

and entered it in the school district-wide competition called

History Day

 

my parents were quietly proud

and so was my teacher

and when the three balding white judges

finally

came around to my project

one of them looked at it and said

                     Yea…

                     but it wasn’t really

                     for the good of mankind, though

                     was it?

And I lost.