Crystal Metropolis Household Internment Camp
We’re within the spinach capital of the world
10,000 cans a day
a statue of Popeye on the town sq.
I stand on the fringe of camp and contact Mexico
We do what all children do
who’re fenced in
the place the desert mild doesn’t finish
and flies swarm the mouth of the horse
border patrol sits on
watching us
We discover each other
maintain one another’s faces
then drown
within the scent of orange blossoms
Orange Grove
Within the seventh month of camp, we cover
within the afternoon shade. Tree branches
block the Texas solar from dogpiling
onto our faces. We’ve snuck right here
twice earlier than, Edison and I, to the place
the guards can’t discover us. We lay
on our backs, wanting up at oranges.
I choose one and behind it grasp 100 extra.
I choose sufficient to fill a ship
I sail into the Pacific away from the scent
of my neighbor’s again sweat. We place a peel
into our mouths and smile. I mumble
a few puzzle I left unfinished in Seattle.
We return to our barracks. Odor of oranges.
Two Years Into Camp
The neighbor children discuss concerning the tanks at Tule Lake
the place their cousins had been taken
The second isn’t proper however I inform them anyway
I miss chocolate milkshakes!
Frosted glass water rings the way it leaves half
of itself behind after I choose it up
There was sufficient snow in Minidoka to make
hundreds of them hundreds
It’s dusk I order from whoever is listening
the horned toad the air
the mud Edison shook from his hair outdoors
floating into the barrack
On the radio an announcement
one other Japanese submarine sunk
Troy Osaki is a Filipino Japanese poet, organizer, and legal professional. A 3-time grand slam poetry champion, he has acquired fellowships from Kundiman, Hugo Home, the Jack Straw Cultural Middle, and the Poetry Basis. His work has been featured in Poetry, The Missouri Evaluation, The Offing, and different publications, and is anthologized in The Gate of Reminiscence: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration (Haymarket Books, 2025). His great-grandfather served as a minister on the Seattle Buddhist Temple throughout World Conflict II.
