Mascot

before the parade at the forgotten war park
children pretend to kill one another with sticks
old war heroes wear vests heavy with symbols

& some wear caps that say the forgotten war
the lucky ones will ride in a convertible
with the mayor & the Irish club & wave to people

who may or may not wave back
near where I stand a veteran sits on a bench
feeding invisible pigeons & talking to himself

or someone only he can see & I wonder if he
killed my great-uncle my grandmother’s brother
who found himself on the wrong side

of the peninsula on the wrong day in history
it’s unlikely I mean what are the odds & even if he had
it’s not like he would know

I consider telling him that he is wasting bread
that there haven’t been pigeons in this park for years
I consider asking if he needs a ride or a hot meal

or if he hates us the way my grandfather did
after the war & even more in the ’80s
when his buddies started losing their jobs

at the Ford plant I consider asking if he’s ever
called anyone a gook to their face or how many
he’s killed but I don’t because the parade

is about to start & anyway how do you tell someone
there are no birds I mean who wants to believe that
who would want to live in a world like that

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Joan Kwon Glass is a diasporic, mixed race Korean poet, author of Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms– winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Eric Hoffer Book Award for Poetry and finalist for the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her book, Night Swim, won the Diode Book Prize. Joan’s poems have been featured on NPR, Best American Poetry, The Slowdown, and Poetry Daily and in Poetry, Passages North, Terrain, Poetry Northwest, Tahoma Literary Review, Ninth Letter, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She is a 2025 SWWIM writer in residence, teachers at writing centers around the country, and lives in Milford, CT.