"History Project" by: Kathy Jetnil.
/"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 decide
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 generals like 9,000 people are out there. Who cares?
I'm not mad at all
I already knew all of this
I glance at a photograph
a boy, peeled skin arms legs suspended
a puppet
next to a lab coat
lost in his clipboard
I read first hand 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
crosslegged 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 our hair our eyes
to seep into our bones
we mistook radioactive fallout
for snow
God will thank you they told us
like god just been
waiting
for my people
to vomit
vomit
vomit
all 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 put goats
before human beings
so their skin can shrivel beneath the glare of hospital room lights
three generations later
as they watch their grandfather their aunty their cousin's life drip
across that same black screen knots of knuckles tied to steel beds
cold and absent of any breath
but I'm only 15
so I finish my project
graph my people's death by cancer and canned food diabetes
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 spraypainted 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."