Brynn Saito is the author of the poetry collection The Palace of Contemplating Departure, winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award and forthcoming from Red Hen Press in March 2013. Her poetry has been anthologized by Helen Vendler and Ishmael Reed; it has also appeared in Ninth Letter, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Pleiades and Drunken Boat.
Poetry by Brynn Saito
To board the train without suspicion
I told the man I was Chinese
can you believe it?
You never have to lie
to survive, now do you?
So what will you do
with your curious pen
and your questions like daggers
slicingbthrough the ripe heat
of the merciless summer,
tearing the grapes from the vine
till they drop like a satchel
of dead knuckles on dead earth?