Linda Stevenson #7 August 7 Hiroshima

Hiroshima

And when did you start writing

poems? in the womb? Not

quite, it was around the time

they dropped the bomb.

Hiroshima

Hiroshima

The Enola Gay flew

right into our kitchen,

my father down the passageway,

half changed into civvies,

shaking. The radio.

Shaking, holding on to the door jamb,

my mother’s brown eyes blown up

into fixed...yet hope in them,

one of those long

matches in Em’s hand,

unstruck, forever poised

above the gas ring.

He said “They’ve done it”

He said

“They’ve dropped the bomb

on

Hiroshima... Japan”

Confusion, it’s all mixed up, dismay.

“It’s over” he said. “The war’s over”

He was horrified,

he was, in some part, relieved.

I knew it was awful. Complex.

Couldn’t be spoken. I thought

I might write about it

seventy years on.

Hiroshima, when...

did you start

writing

poems?