American Abyss

Cynthia Dewi Oka

I followed here the heart
I built for you. Here it is, blue

as the preening peacock’s crest, bruise
renewed again and again. Blue as

children made vapor, families ground
to grist raining on the accordion

chest of the sea. I followed here my own
forgetting of the fireflies that blink

like prayers in belligerent grasses; my
dreams of mattering, as in, appearing—

a noun in your syntax. That stone
you strike for water. Is this not

the Dream? To take more than
bodies have to give, then eat without

discord? I want you to know I have
always understood my place. That

the only feeling more beautiful than
your fear is your want. Look,

how your flowers light the world.

Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Fire Is Not a Country (Northwestern University Press, 2021). She teaches creative writing at Bryn Mawr College and lives in Collingswood, New Jersey.

About Cynthia Dewi Oka

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About this Poem

“This poem is born from my struggle with how we have, as a nation, normalized genocide as policy. I was compelled to take responsibility for the part of myself that knows intimately the cost of the ‘American Dream,’ and yet, still strove to be a part of it. My own family are survivors of a U.S.-supported genocide in Indonesia that ensured access for Western corporations to her resources. Writing this poem gave me permission to build a new foundation for my life with the wisdom of Mother Earth, the vision of divine guides, and the faith of my ancestors.”
—Cynthia Dewi Oka

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Behind disinfected curtains, beyond touch of sunrise devouring the terrible gold of leaves, a man could be his own eternal night. City flattened to rubble, his surviving height a black flight of notes: the chip-toothed blade and oldest anesthetic. Escaped convict, he climbs wild-eyed, one hand out— running its twin on the rails of a broken Steinway.

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American Abyss

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American Abyss

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