This is the playground
of the enemys youth:
upturned graves and craters
to swim in when it rains.
Small children shake skulls
like rattles,
while older ones carve rifles
out of bone,
making what use of the time
given them.
Mark Osaki's work has appeared in The Georgia Review, South Carolina Review, and Onset Review, as well as the anthologies Carrying the Darkness: The Poetry of the Vietnam War (Avon, Texas Tech University Press), Men of Our Time: An Anthology of Male Poetry in Contemporary America (University of Georgia Press), Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets (Greenfield Review Press), and Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac (National Public Radio). He has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, University of California at Berkeley, San Francisco Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He served in the federal intelligence community.