& Somehow, My Grandpa Finds Places to Sleep after Japan Invades
By Troy Osaki
After Diane Seuss and KB Brookins
An American armada. One sheetless cot aboard a cargo ship.
The cook tells him he doesn’t like Filipinos. My grandpa
stands in his briefs soaked from swimming in the deepest part
of the Pacific. Dripping, the atomic bomb flattens Hiroshima.
A hotel room in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The owner,
Filipino, born in the same province my grandpa is from.
Both remember the smell of every river before the Death
March. A Holly Park bench after asking, in his best
American accent, for a raise & instead, his manager offered
$2 to wash his house windows facing Lake Washington.
1962 at the Seattle World’s Fair in the coliseum shade
before his son is crowned FYA Little King, Paul,
or Pablo in Spanish, after his dad, who didn’t tell him
what to do in America. Just to get there.
