Separated based on race in U-Hauls,
they waited hours for their captors
to release them, no due process,
no access to lawyers, detained
without constitutional rights
in a land known for freedom,

our city under siege.

Is Joe Biden a Catholic
and Marco Rubio.
It is said so
still.
The unanswerable question is
why
the Pope allows it.
Why
he doesn’t have a word,
why
he doesn’t use his power
to excommunicate the inhumane,
the ungodly in his Church,
he only speaks.

A small act of rebellion
along the journey
to justice.

If you do a situation analysis of the present milieu there’s a definite sense of existential  crisis on the world stage, driven by factors relating to geopolitical conflicts, some  experts call it “identity politics,” and also factors such as climate and other change  conditions including advancing antidemocratic movements, growth of xenophobia, and  related societal change fostering the challenges of so-called “alternative truth” enabled  by social media, what Stephen Colbert way back when started referring to as  “truthiness.” It even made Merriam Webster. 

This all leans in the direction of a technology-induced alienation as identified by such respected minds as Sherry Turkle (Alone Together) who has been preaching about this for years. 

In his article in The Atlantic, “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is: What’s Happening in America Today is Something Darker than a Misinformation Crisis,” Charlie Warzel writes “What is clear is that a new framework is  needed to describe this [reality] fracturing.” 

Whether you identify it as nihilism, pessimism, cynicism, apathy, ennui or otherwise,  we’re in a pickle.  

As a poet, I tend to translate trauma into words, and just maybe we need to turn to  poetry as a helpmate “to describe this fracturing” as per Warzel’s suggestion.

What is clear is that a new framework is needed to describe this  [reality] fracturing. 

My work was first published later in life, at age 70, to be exact; I had won a poetry prize  at the tender age of 19, which should have been encouraging, but I had other fish to  fry…Then the muse started gnawing at me, I started writing again. Graves said “There’s  no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either” …A recurring theme in  my work is that enunciated in the thought of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954):  “At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.” My interest in  this theme in general is sparked by the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926 – 2004).  She had this to say on the subject: “The most beautiful people we have known are  those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have  found their way out of the depths” (this paragraph extracted from my book Gallery). 

The first of November I’ll be 81. I concur with Einstein who said: “I have reached an age  when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to” and anyway as a Scorpio the  words I choose are supposed to carry the ring—and sting—of truth. So how about we  consider mac n’ cheese? What does comfort food have to do with the troubles of our  times? Let’s back up. 

Theodor Adorno (1903 – 1969) the German philosopher and social theorist posited that  “industrialism turns souls into things.” Industrialism can stand for technology more  generally. There’s usually a good side, but almost always a downside. Adorno knew a  few things personally about trauma. His mother was a Catholic, his father an  assimilated Jew who converted to Protestantism. Among other travails he endured  during the Nazi era as a non-Aryan his freedom was restricted more and more over time  and he was forced (luckily in retrospect) to leave Germany and he did not return until  well after Hitler’s defeat. Needless to say Adorno was a staunch critic of Fascism and  published influential studies on authoritarianism, propaganda and the like including the  seminal work The Authoritarian Personality (1950) which outlines a set of traits and  characteristics based on an “F scale” (for fascist). 

industrialism turns souls into things. 

In his Philosophy Now essay, “Socrates, Memory & The Internet” Matt Bluemink seeks  to alert us as to what we risk from advancing technology, particularly our smartphones  and the Internet which we have so willingly delegated to take over for our brain. He  emphasizes the importance of being “thoughtful” in the face of the distractions inherent  in our device-laden lives. He writes that “without paying attention…one loses the ability  to empathise, and thus the ability to ‘take care’ of one another, and of the society in  which we live.” Importantly, he perceives of literature, of thoughtful reading, as a critical  antidote as the literary arts specifically “stretch” the mind and enhance the thought  process and poetry is the sine qua non for this type of exercise. 

How does mac n’ cheese enter the picture?. On one of my all too frequent visits to my  inboxes (I am not immune from the habit), two items in my news feed caught my eye. 

One from Ad Age which I follow, headlined “Mac and Cheese Marketing Battle—How  Kraft’s Dominance is Being Challenged” and the other “Armed Militia ‘Hunting FEMA’ Causes Hurricane  Responders to Evacuate” from Newsweek. The nexus struck me like a lightning bolt  in a tropical storm. I thought, “It’s no coincidence, it’s metaphor plain and simple!” 

I offer and conclude then with the prose poem springing from this revelation, leaving you  to think about it. 

Mac n’ Cheese Wars Amid Crumbling Reality, a Recipe for Disaster 

Take and make a thynne foyle of dowh, and kerue it on pieces, and cast hym on  boiling water & seeþ it wele. Take chese and grate it, and butter imelte, cast  bynethen and abouven as losyns; and serue forth.* 

—Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century 

It’s hard to understand. Middle English I mean. We don’t speak it now so it seems  unreal. Like some folks eat mac n’ cheese any way it comes, however it’s made makes  no difference, it’s how it tastes that matters. Taste is a matter of taste of course. And  now they have a cheeseless mac n’ cheese which can’t be really mac n’ cheese can it?  How can it? This is a serious matter. It goes to the heart of what America stands for.  Where is Tom Jefferson when you need him to adjudicate? He loved the stuff. He had  his slave chef whip up batches upon batches at Monticello, state dinners included, he  often used his noodles as the diplomacy du jour. Now Kraft is battling the interlopers  trying to convince the public with smoke and mirrors that something made from plants  can be cheesy as you please. It’s a hoax how else can you explain it? Doubtless real  cheese can rot, invite maggots, then there’s processed cheese, less vulnerable like  Velveeta and powdered versions too you never knew, it looked like cheese, if you’re raised on it, it’s cheese to you though impregnated with artificial colors, preservatives  you name it. Do we really care as long as it tastes good? Black people think White  people stole mac n’ cheese from them, like rock n’ roll, we’re so divided these days in so  many ways mac n’ cheese is something different depending who you talk to and rumors  of an armed militia “hunting” FEMA caused hurricane responders to evacuate! Really? 

*Modern English version: Take a piece of thin pastry dough and cut it in pieces, place in  boiling water and cook. Take grated cheese, melted butter, and arrange in layers like  lasagna; serve. [source: Makerouns (godecookery.com)]

For other related work by the author see “Walmart Was the Largest Retailer in  America.”  For further  reading: NASA website, “The Causes of Climate Change”  and The Atlantic—”I’m Running Out  of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is: What’s Happening in America Today is Something  Darker than a Misinformation Crisis.” 

and took me aside to tell me I was just in time
     to attend the funeral I didn’t know about—

for the first love I had met on a summer job
     and with whom I shared my first intimacy

other than a kiss, her roommate passing
     through the bedroom one evening smiling

while muttering, Carry on. My parents questioned
     whether she was the right one. She wasn’t.

After my first month at grad school, I drove 400 miles
     for a surprise visit only to discover

she was out on a date. So, thirty years later, I declined
     a last goodbye in favor of a first hello.

There are two ways to be fooled.
One is to believe what isn’t true;
the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
—Soren Kierkegaard

I’ve been there.
Stood at the pinnacle.
That was before
the apocalypse.

water completely took out another
bridge across the Broad River,
this one to Chimney Rock State Park.
The park was closed.*

Took in the vista.
Seemingly timeless.
Looking through the
lens of my old Pentax
the Smoky Mountains
aptly named spreading
across the sky. the Great
Smoky Mountain Railroad
stop In Dillsboro.
I’ve been there.
A quaint town.
Shops galore, the
Smokehouse Bar-b-que.
The engine’s
belching stack
matching the
train’s name
pulling into
the station.

“The Train,” as the Great Smoky
Mountain Railroad is known in town,
pay a lot of salaries in Dillsboro.
Its immediate return has not been established.**

The Biltmore in Asheville.
The flood’s signature
drape its portal walls.
Its exquisite gardens?
Spared per reports.
In the past, Asheville
held a nightly summer
country fest of harmony
and hoedown they named
“Shindig on the Green.”
Does the green still stand?

the flag at Chimney Rock [was raised]
… as a symbol of hope and
strength for all of Western North Carolina.***

I’ve been there—
global warming
was still struggling
to earn a name.
.
Epigraph sources:
Kierkegaard-popular translation of quote from Works of Love (1847).
*Helene damages North Carolina Tourist Destinations 
** Dillsboro pulling together after a lashing from Helene | thesylvaherald
***North Carolina State Parks Facebook Post

Afterword: Three things: 1). A number of years ago, in the Michigan Quarterly Review a group of literary luminaries joined the fray in a series of seven articles about writing Holocaust poetry. Alicia Ostriker had this to say, “Writing is what poets do about trauma. We try to come to grips with what threatens to make us crazy, by surrounding it with language.” 2). When my older daughter, now a middle school special education coordinator started her undergraduate career at Florida State in Tallahassee, the parents were treated to a lecture to show the kind of thing the students would be experiencing. The history professor involved propounded a theory which is both profound and difficult involving a meta-analysis approach asserting that all events, devastating hurricanes included, have positive outcomes if viewed in a larger context. The point of view is hard to reconcile. 3). Climate change is an existential threat, yet, as with Dorian Gray, collectively we have given away our future in exchange for the enjoyments of the moment. For other related work by the author see “Walmart Was the Largest Retailer in America.” For further reading: NASA website, “The Causes of Climate Change.”

This poem first appeared in Dissident Voice.

Civil War

North against South
brother against—

So on and so forth…

A war by proxy
is still a war

4,000,000¹ Koreans dead
approx.

Call it genocide
by proxy

If a war by proxy
is still a war worth
dying for—

37,000² Americans killed
approx.

another 3100³ UN forces
killed

900,000⁴ Chinese
killed

All in all
over 5,000,000⁵ dead approx.

orphan⁶ (ôrfən)
n.

1. • A child whose parents are dead.
   • A child who has been deprived of parental care and has not been adopted.
2. A young animal that has been prematurely separated from its parents or its mother.

In 1951,
only one year
into the war
there were approx.

100,000⁷ orphaned children
across the entire Korean Peninsula

By 1953,
there were approx.

516,000⁸ across the peninsula,
now split in two

As the late great
Louis Armstrong

once sang—
Takes two to tango

By 1953,
there were approx.

350,000⁹ Korean
sex workers

south of the
DMZ

many living
and working

in camptowns
providing comfort¹⁰

to foreign¹¹ soldiers

some were abducted
some were drugged

some were told they
would be waitresses

some were orphans
themselves

They called those babies—
Ameriasian

By 1965
there were approx.

12,380 mixed-race¹² orphans

born of war,
scattered

south of the
DMZ

In 1955,
evangelicals¹³ arrived at

Portland International Airport
with eight – – – . . mixed-race orphans

“Fear not: for I am with thee:
I will bring thy seed from the East…

Bring my sons from far, and my daughters
from the ends of the earth…”¹⁴

By 1978,
approx.

4,494¹⁵ mixed-race
orphans

had been adopted
abroad

What began as
a rescue mission

then turned into
an industry—

200,000¹⁶ Korean adoptees
approx.

By 2004,
there were approx.

30,000¹⁷ designated
as [abandoned]

some were [relinquished]
some were [found]

some were [abducted]
some were [bought] with bribes

call it fraud
call it doctoring

call it falsifying documents
call it playing fast and loose

with subjective objective
truths

Between 1970 and 1979
there were approx.

46,035¹⁸ Korean adoptees
sent overseas

Between 1980 and 1989
adoption peaked at

65,511¹⁹ approx.

By this time,
most adoptees

were considered to be
fully Korean

some were [relinquished] some came from Seoul
some were [found] some came from Daegu

some were [abducted] some came from Busan
some were [bought] with bribes some came from places

they’ll never get a chance to know…

From 1990 to 1999
there were approx.

22,925²⁰ Korean adoptees
sent overseas

some were [relinquished] some became French
some were [found] some became Swedish

some were [abducted] some became American
some were [bought] with bribes or at least they

tried to be…

And in 1994,
there were

2,290²¹ Korean adoptees
approx.

close to a dozen arrived
at LaGuardia Airport

on the 28th
of January

and one of them…

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²²

Notes

On “Circumstantial Evidence.” The poem is structured as a statistical narrative timeline. It begins by tracing the number of casualties throughout the Korean War, then pivots to tracking the number of adoptions over the many decades following.

While certain facts about the Korean War are common knowledge, the statistical data is based on estimates that have been heavily disputed by scholars and governments alike. Most of the statistical data comes from the following sources:

1. Hahn, Bae-Ho, Kwang-Rin Lee, et al. “Korea | History, Peninsula, Rulers, and Facts.”
   Encyclopedia Britannica, 21 Sept. 2024, www.britannica.com/place/Korea/Armistice-and-aid.
2. Lopez, C. Todd. “Families of Service Members Gone Missing in Action Get Answers at
   Annual Briefing.” U.S. Department of Defense, 15 Aug. 2024, www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3875464/families-of-service-members-gone-missing-in-action-get-answers-at-annual-briefi/.
3. United Nations Command. “United Nations Command > Organization > Contributors.”
   United Nations Command, www.unc.mil/Organization/Contributors.
4. Mao Zedong’s “Order to the Chinese People’s Volunteers,” 1950 | US-China Institute.
   china.usc.edu/mao-zedongs-order-chinese-peoples-volunteers-1950.
5. Korean War – Go for Broke. (n.d.-b).

   Cumings, Bruce (2011). The Korean War: A History. Modern Library. P.
   35. ISBN 9780812978964.

6. Publishers, HarperCollins. The American Heritage Dictionary Entry: Orphan.
   www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=orphan.
7. Korean adoption history”, in Eleana Kim (ed.), Community. Guide to Korea for overseas
   adopted Koreans, Seoul: Overseas Koreans Foundation, 2004, pp. 12-19+25-47. (edited article)
8. Ibid.
9. Cho, Grace M. (2008). Haunting the Korean diaspora : shame, secrecy, and the forgotten
   war. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780816666461. OCLC 311053574.
10. Lie, John. “The Transformation of Sexual Work in 20th-Century Korea.” Gender and Society, vol. 9, no. 3, 1995, pp. 310–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/190058. Accessed 30 Sept. 2024.
11. Sang-Hun, Choe. “A Brutal Sex Trade Built for American Soldiers” NY Times (New
    York) 2 Mar. 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/02/world/asia/korea-us-comfort-women-sexual-slavery.html
12. Doolan, Yuri W., ‘The Second Rescue’, The First Amerasians: Mixed Race Koreans from
    Camptowns to America (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Mar. 2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197534380.003.0006, accessed 26 Sept. 2024.
13. Hurh, Won Moo. 1972. “Marginal children of war: An exploratory study of
    American-Korean children”. International Journal of Sociology of the Family 2 (3): 10-20.
14. Holt, Bertha | Women of the Hall. https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/bertha-holt/
    “Stork Announcement for Holt Family Adoptions | Smithsonian Institution.” Smithsonian Institution, www.si.edu/object/stork-announcement-holt-family-adoptions:nmah_1296338.
15. Kim, Chin, and Timothy G. Carroll. “Intercountry Adoption of South Korean Orphans: A
    Lawyer’s Guide.” Journal of Family Law 14, no. 2 (1975)
16. Tong-Hyung, Kim, and Claire Galofaro. “South Koreans Adopted as Babies Are
    Discovering Lies From Their Past | AP News.” AP News, 19 Sept. 2024, apnews.com/article/south-korea-international-adoption-fraud-investigation-e4e7d4b8823212e3b260517c5128cd66.
17. Hübinette, Tobias. (PDF) “Appendix – Table 3. Family Background of adopted Koreans,
    1958-2004”, Comforting an Orphaned Nation : Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture, Departmental of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, 14 July 2015,
18. Hübinette, Tobias. (PDF) “Appendix – Table 1. Number of international adoptions from
    Korea, 1953-2004”, Comforting an Orphaned Nation : Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture, Departmental of Oriental Languages, Stockholm University, 14 July 2015, www.researchgate.net/publication/277993137_Comforting_an_orphaned_nation_Representations_of_international_adoption_and_adopted_Koreans_in_Korean_popular_culture.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Idid.
22. The last line of the poem appears as the final footnote.

Never again
the swarms
of refugees
left behind
fleeing
dying
pleading
to be let in anywhere
dying
unwanted.
Never again.
That’s what they said
then.

But then
in Asia
in Africa
in the Middle East
in south America
it happened
again.

And now
in Gaza
it’s happening
again.
Again and again
and again.