& Somehow, My Grandpa Finds Places to Sleep after Japan Invades

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.