Counting Out 9's Poem by Amy Uyematsu

call me superstitious : 9/9/9
Photo of Amy Uyematsu by Raul Contreras
time to take stock, turn a corner, or
party like I've never done before
my summer brimming with sushi menus,
blackjack tables, high school reunions,
brazilian beaches and samba drums
I return to a city on fire
and a country at war with itself
where nobody listens, nobody
cares like we did 40 years ago
flush with woodstock, the moonwalk, and me
awakening to revolution,
to my lai massacres and the black
panthers, to clamorous demands for
ethnic studies and yellow power
back then play lost out to politics
I listened to motown but quoted
marx and malcolm, angela and mao
no one in 1969 could
ever imagine 9-11
or a president named obama
I was once such a wise 21
but four decades blur and bleed between
and there's no working compass in sight