cops in a blue line facing us, the width
of the street between. On the White House
roof, a man in uniform aimed a high-
powered long-range sharpshooter
rifle at us. He aimed it, put it down,
aimed, put it down. A van drove
into the cordoned area; I think the insignia
on it said Federal Prison. 2 or 3
cops unfolded a tarp, and taped it on to
the side of the van, covering over the words.
I got afraid. They’re hiding the place where
they would take us. They would disappear us.
They’re going to drive us through the streets
of the capital in an unmarked white vehicle.
No one would know what became of us. Keep
singing. Keep loving. Say in unequivocal
words, “I love you.” Hear, “I love you, Maxine.”
The Metropolitan Police, the men, stood
in one-line formation. The women, we,
the demonstrators, drew one another close.
We were a bouquet knot of pink roses.
How can it be that all the cops are men,
and all for Peace women? I can’t live
in such a world. I don’t want to keep
living out the myth that men fight
and women mother. We regressed—the junior
high dance. One boy crossed
the wide floor, chose one girl,
escorted her back to the other side, where
he arrested her. “My wife
is gonna kill me,” said a black cop;
“I’m arresting Alice Walker.” “Don’t hold
hands with me,” said a white cop,
shaking off his partner, who was smiling up
at him; “Don’t take my arm either.”
They had each one of us stand by herself
alongside the van, and took our pictures.
“Quit smiling. What are you smiling for?
This is an arrest.” This is your mug shot,
not your prom photo. I was smiling from
happiness; my government will not disappear me;
the tarp was but backdrop for shooting pix!
And the beautiful pink aura was still upon me.
My cop and I did not speak. A woman
officer in casual uniform, no gun,
took my purse, hair clips, pink poncho,
my earrings, and put them in a plastic bag.
Ready for handcuffing, I presented
my hands, wrists together, in front,
but my arresting officer signaled: in back.
I won’t be able to write, to touch, to catch
myself, and will fall on my face. I turned about,
held my arms behind me as high as I could,
bending way forward, making my gestures
large for the witnesses to see. Handcuffs
in this age of new plastics work like the ties
for bread and trees. My arrester could
have tightened the cable-tie so that it cut
into the skin. The hands turn blue, burst.
These police were kind to tie us loosely.
Our belongings taken, our pictures taken,
handcuffed, we were made to get into
a paddy wagon, about 8 per wagon.
There are cages, like dog cages, between
the front seat and the side benches. I sat
in the middle of a bench, my shoulders touching
women’s shoulders beside me, my legs touching
women’s legs before me. Women outside
pounded, drummed on the van. Through the windshield,
we could see them applauding us. Somebody said,
“There’s my daughter.” The van started up;
the crowd parted, let the van through.
It got quiet. We were driving away from
the magic. The rose light went out.
I had nothing apposite to say, but
had to talk. “Now I’m on the trip
my father went on. In a paddy wagon to jail.
I’m reliving his arrests. I’m knowing his feelings.
Scared. Helpless. He wondered what would become
of him, maybe deportation. They’re driving
him to the border, never to see his family again.
Oh, but my father wasn’t committing civil
disobedience like us. He committed crime,
ran gambling, half the take in the city.
It was his job—go to jail, regularly.
Once a month, they raided the gambling house,
and took just one guy, my father.
He was all alone in the paddy wagon
riding through the streets and out of town.
It was okay. By the end of the night, he
and whiskey and cigarettes, and they let him go.
He gave them a fake Chinese name,
a different Chinese name every time;
he doesn’t have a record.” BaBa
used to say, “I want the life
you live.” Now I’m living
the life he lived.
A few women squirmed
out of their handcuffs, marveled at how
loosely they’d been tied. Arriving at the prison—
an immense spread-out building on bare land
fenced off from other bare land
in the middle of nowhere—they put their handcuffs
back on. We were taken to an office,
which had a wall that was a bank of jail cells.
We were separated, I in a cell by myself.
It was like a toilet stall; an unlidded
toilet faced the door. Also for sitting
was a little bench. Being little, I could
sleep curled up on it, just right.
At last, the solitary confinement of my dreams.
Nothing to fear. I could live here.
I could live here a long time,
and be content. As a girl, I knew
I could take solitary, if only I got
to see movies. Older, all I need
would be books and pencil and paper. But here I am,
and I don’t feel like reading. And I don’t
feel like writing. Can’t write, hands
tied in back. Rest. Perfect rest.
And no more contending against shyness.
No more “sounded and resounded words,
chattering words, echoes, dead words …”
—Walt Whitman, lover of everyone and everyplace.
Yes, I could live like a cloistered nun,
but not have to pray for the good of the world.
Too soon, the jail door opened.
The cop whose wife is gonna kill him held
it open for Alice Walker. Now there’s
a pair of us. I gave her my seat
on the bench, sat on the floor. She sat
various positions, cross-legged, almost
lotus, sat hunkered, arms hugging knees.
I’m glad, we’ve both had Buddhist practice, and know:
sit, be quiet. Breathe out.
Breathe in. I spoke, asked her
to undo my handcuffs, and if they
won’t untie, to help me unbutton and lower
my pants, I had to pee. She got them off.
Kwan Yin, 2 more of your
10,000 hands, ma’am, reporting for duty,
for mercy. Being locked up with Alice,
I saw her: now a girl perched on a wall,
now we’re under the dark moon and she’s
shaman crone, now the sociable lady
on her book covers. She moves about in time.
Her time and ages circle through her. Now
her clothes flowed loosely on her thin body,
draped the edges of the bench; now roundly,
&nb
sp; plumply she filled her blouse and long sweater.
I must look like that too; being small,
I could be a child still growing, or
I could be a shrinking old woman.
The light changes, the skin wrinkles, the skin
smooths.
The door opened again, we’re a crowd
again, loud-speaking, loud-singing women.
“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Oh, this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”
The singing connected the women in all this block
of cells; love and peace roused again.
“On the children of Iraq, I’m gonna let it shine.
Oh, on the children of Iraq, I’m gonna let it shine.
On the children of Iraq, I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”
A nice woman cop came in, and asked us,
please to sing quieter, explained that they
couldn’t hear to process us. We quieted,
pianissimo, “this little light of mine.”
But impossible to keep it down. Crescendo. Waves.
“Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”
Fortissimo. The door opened; a policeman
called a name, and took a woman away,
for booking. When my turn came, I couldn’t
find my I.D. “The big cell for you
tonight.” Tonight, overnight, I will
be with criminals, not sisters trained
in nonviolence. I asked the cop across
the desk from me—one prisoner and one cop
per desk; a woman was shackled to her chair
with old-style steel handcuffs,
couldn’t be locked up because of illness—
I asked my arresting officer, please to bring
my bag of possessions, and let’s go through it
again carefully for my I.D. Slowly,
he examined each thing. I talked-
story, “D’you know what I’m working on now?
I’m writing a Book of Peace. Once
in old China, there were books—reveries—
about how to end war. Those books were burned,
their authors’ tongues cut out. My dream
is to write such a book for our time.
People who read it, I hope, will vow
not to use guns, not to use cluster bombs,
not any of the new weapons, plasma bomb,
neutron bomb, earth-penetrating bomb.
D’you mind letting me rummage
through my purse myself? Thank you. Thank you.
I seem to remember a secret compartment somewhere.
It’s a trick purse. I brought it—pink,
sequins—especially for this demonstration.
And now it’s fooling me. The hiding place
has disappeared. Let me try again.
Okay, it’s not on this side. Let’s try
upside down, backwards, unzip—
voilà!—here it is! My I.D.!”
And so I was charged with STATIONARY DEMO
IN A RESTRICTED ZONE—WHITE HOUSE SIDEWALK,
and let go. To appear in court for trial,
or else: A warrant will be issued for me, a wanted
felon, throughout the United States. The 24
women (25 counting a girl caught
up in the fun; her mother took her away,
bawled out everybody), the freed women
waited for one another, made sure
no one left behind. Where’s the nearest
bus stop? No buses. Where’s the subway?
“Far. You ladies don’t want to
walk there. Dangerous.” “Will you please
call us a taxi? 6 taxis?” “Cabs
won’t come out here, ma’am. Please clear
the waiting area. Leave the waiting area
immediately.” Then we were out on a road
in the middle of flat fields with nothing growing.
No stars in the sky, too lit
by the prison. Someone cell-phoned Code
Pink colleagues to come get us. The journalists—
journalists arrested too—turned on their equipment,
and recorded us exulting, the most beautiful day
of our lives. We rode back to the city
in cars festooned in pink ribbons, rode
showy through the capital of the U.S.A.
The good citizens cheered us, honked horns.
Not one disagreeing person
yelled or honked in anger. 12 days
later, Iraq War II, Operation Iraqi
Freedom, Shock and Awe started.
A-Day, hit Iraq with 300
to 400 satellite-guided missiles.
On the second day, round-the-clock bombing,
another 300 to 400
smart bombs. That was the plan, spoken by
an “author of Shock and Awe.”
“You have this simultaneous
effect, rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima,
not taking days or weeks but in minutes.”
We had used all our arts—
sung, danced, walked about as goddesses.
Full body puppets on stilts, in pink
and red garments of flowing silk, bent
down in mercy to children. We staged
a theater of peace, recited poems—and did not
stop our country from war. I wanted to lie down
and die but did not. I do believe: Because
the world protested, the tonnage of bombs was not as
massive as planned. And we hit fewer civilians.
The peace we have made shall have consequences.
All affects all.
On parade in Viet Nam,
the dragon on hundreds of pairs of feet walked
and ran along the river—a river once red
with human blood from slaughter that these very
people around me eyewitnessed, and had part in.
We, dragon, ran and walked until
the village we’d left came into sight; the river
circled and returned us home. We rested in tents
and ate joong. I pointed, said, “Joong,”
hoping Chinese and Vietnamese
feed rice, beans, meat, 100-
year-old eggs wrapped in leaves
to the same ancestor, Peace, and to the dragons
who live in and are the river. But
they called this food something else,
and their story was about a beautiful princess
captured by / run off with a dragon.
All the village every year give
chase after her, and come home happy,
and in union.
FATHER’S VILLAGE
Follow the rivers and streams north,
deltas of Viet Nam turn into deltas
of China. There be my root villages.
23 years ago, from Guangzhou,
we had to hire a van and driver,
and a guide, get on 2 ferry boats—
drive, ferry, drive, ferry, drive
some more—the Pearl River’s side
rivers winding and hairpin turning
at islands and bars. Had to stay overnight
in the one hotel, farmgirl maids
yell-talking, loud laughing, no sleep.
Drive on the next morning, and arrive
at Roots Headquarters for Long Lost
Overseas Relatives Finding Relatives.
Word, my father’s name, my name,
had been bruited about this land. My cousin,
Elder Brother, heard, and was there to meet
me, recognized me, and greeted me, “Hola,
Younger Sister, our family is running in harm
ony.”
“Hola, Elder Brother, our family is running
in harmony.” Harmony. China has announced Harmony
its official theme. Harmony posted on walls.
Lights flash Harmony up on buildings;
the night rivers reflect Harmony. Our son,
a musician, has tattooed on each arm:
harmony
make peace, make kindness
mutual, reciprocal
extraordinary (like outlanders, like barbarians)
I did the calligraphy myself.
Harmony also translates as peace;
its roots are mouth and growing grain. The mouth
speaks peace. Peace is food; peace nourishes.
Confucius said, Whoever plays the music
controls the world, spinning like a top
on the palm of his hand. (He ordered the killing
of 80 musicians.) Elder Brother said,
“My elder brother of Boston went
back just this morning. He’s upset
over his kids. Every one of them married
a white demon.” He laughed a big, relishing
laugh, not the laugh that Chinese
make after telling a tragic awfulness. I
translated for Earll, “A generation of nephews
and nieces married white demons!” Elder
Brother looked at my husband, did a double-
take—a white demon! He saw me laughing,
and gave 2 thumbs up, and cheered, “Okay!”
Thumbs up with strong farmer’s hands.
He and Earll walked hand in hand
through the fields. I stayed with the women—
our families have many more girls
than boys—and watched the 2 men now giant,
human, against sky and land, now
as nothing, transitories in the infinite.
To amble the earth that you work daily is to give
yourself and guest entertainment and rest.
Earll understood his Elder Brother-in-Law
to be naming his happinesses. Ah,
generous fields of rice. Ah, great
water buffalo, and baby buffalo. Ah,
kinship. But for skin dark from the sun,
and arms and legs brawny from labor, this “brother”
looked like my real American brothers. None
of the women looked like my sisters and mother.
In Earll’s presence, they marveled, “He doesn’t
understand us. We can say anything
we want.” They dared one another,
“Say whatever you like to say.” I listened
hard, but didn’t catch their secrets. I saw
the brick stove where my mother cooked,
reading a novel all the while, and let
the food burn. She’d foraged for straw
to heat that stove. I saw my parents’ cupboard