PoetryMagazine.com

Genny Lim
USA

Genny Lim's  poetry books are Winter Place from the San Francisco Kearny Street Workshop and Child of War from Kalamku Press (Univ. of Hawaii). She is author of two plays: Paper Angels and Bitter Cane and the nonfiction book Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island (Univ. of Washington) Lim has performed and recorded in poetry and music collaborations with jazz greats, Max Roach, Herbie Lewis, John Santos, Francis Wong and Jon Jang. Her play, Paper Angels, was performed in San Francisco's Chinatown and won the Fringe Festival Top Ten Award for Best Site Specific Work. Her performance piece, Where is Tibet?premiered at CounterPULSE, San Francisco and was performed at AfroSolo Arts and Women on the Way Festivals.
 

 

 

Resurrection
 
 What will become of them?
An incendiary river of bodies
marching to the Nile?
An enigma of faces bearing
their dreams on burning torches?
Hungry butchers wielding cleavers without meat?
Candlemakers burning candles without wax?
Children devouring hope, without bread or books?

 

What will become of the ancient hieroglyphs?
The pyramids and treasures of Osiris?
The tyranny of pharaohs dismembered
disinterred from tombs?

 

Who will excavate their cries?
Born of Isis and mummified hopes?
In the desert of sleeping sphinxes
where stone lays siege to endless sand?
in a country ripe for the taking?
in a country ripe for the making?

 

What will become of them?
A river of discontent wending its way
to Cairo and Alexandria?
To Yemen and Libya?
To Syria and us?

 

What will become of us?
Who stand on the sides in
the blood of Arab spring?



 

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