Paradise Going, Going, Gone
West Windsor, NJ
2019, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
We don’t wear bikinis on Bikini Atoll.
In fact, the island houses no people at all.
Plutonium bombs do not make a paradise:
The Tomb’s a radioactive storage device.
On Runit Isle the Cactus bomb left a crater
That soldiers filled with fallout. No thought for later.
No lining installed to protect the aquifer.
No fence, no warning signs to keep out the camper.
Coconut crabs will detangle your DNA.
Giant clams can set off geiger counters today.
From nearby Enewetak Island, my mother
Got cervical cancer; thyroid, my grandmother;
My sister, leukemia. What a legacy!
We are all leaving. Behind us, the poverty.
Off to Oregon, Washington, Arkansas.
Goodbye, forever, to what our ancestors saw.
One fine day, we’ll try in vain to return and see
Our islands covered by a swelling King tide sea.
Reflection
Reflection
My poem centers on the Marshall Islands, a group of low-lying volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean that are threatened by nuclear pollution and sea level rise. I wrote about the Marshall Islands because of the islands’ volatile past as a nuclear testing ground, their current pollution by nuclear waste leakage, and their future permanent submergence under the ocean water. From 1946 to 1958, the Marshall Islands were America’s “Pacific Proving Grounds.” These islands took the brunt of 67 nuclear bomb tests. The fallout prevented many of the indigenous Pacific Islander inhabitants from returning. The bombs dropped made some islands like Bikini Atoll completely uninhabitable. Eventually, people returned after the fallout was cleaned up by the U.S. military, and the radioactive substances were put under a concrete dome on Runit Island. The future of the Marshall Islands looks equally as tragic. With the average elevation of the Marshall Islands only two meters, rising sea levels are a threat to the population. Climate change also comes in the form of persistent droughts and large “King tides” that threaten the fresh water supplies. The concrete dome is also affected by the new climate conditions. With bigger storms, the dome is starting to crack and leak radiation. Climate change, radiation, and poverty on the islands have been forcing many people to leave. Most come to the U.S. Already a third of the population has left, and once again, the Marshallese people might be forced from their islands as in the past.