This November, to recognize and honor National Adoption Awareness Month, I've invited adoptee poet Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello to curate a folio of poems by 10 Asian American adoptees. This page features “War Department Theater” by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs. I invite you to take a moment to read her moving introduction to the folio here [1], as well as the other nine poems in this collection.

— Eugenia Leigh, Poetry Editor

ŸŸ Ÿ•    •

A T T E N T I O N

all personnel

"SEX HYGIENE"
a showing

War Department Theater at 1 p.m. this date

Gentlemen, to master the aerial

zoom into the microbial

Here you tunnel vision

Here you dry mount

a dyed fatale splayed across glass

slides unzips a cursive

No love letters, this girl

crawls inside and fuses

If unable to resist your urges

recall your blond sister in Montana

the sure shot preacher’s kid

your Rust Belt common sense

as you make surface contact

the ticking clock

tied to your inner thigh

where her spirochetes corkscrew in

Don’t go it alone, Casanova

Hold your position / in the auditorium

Flank VD / with a clean shaft

of light / to project a major / to protect us

Father says: Go pro, kid

if you dip in deep kimchi

Strike fast / a green mountain hideout

Look out for moose

chancres / hanger queen

a shell strapped to your metal abdomen

Whirr through gossamer / curtain the ground

From the cockpit / watch it

shudder / swallow

wound / womb

as you make a clean break

This piece was published as part of the November Adoptee Literature Folio. To see other works from the folio, please visit the table of contents here [2].