Castle Bravo

Poetry by Kristi Moos

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Kristi Moos is the editor of Poecology. Her work appears in Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, New American Writing, Terrain.org, and others. She lives in Palo Alto, California.

Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device detonated by the United States to date. The bomb was detonated on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. The test was kept a secret, though it poisoned inhabitants of local islands. On the day of the test, the winds shifted unexpectedly, blowing nuclear fallout over test personnel, trapping them inside their bunkers. “Approximately five hours after detonation, it began to rain radioactive fallout at Rongelap. Within hours, the atoll was covered with a fine, white, powdered-like substance. No one knew it was radioactive fallout…the children played in the snow. They ate it.” –Senator Jeton Anjain, on behalf of the Rongelap Atoll Local Government

Summer came early in the South Pacific: radiation burned the print of flowered dresses

into the Marshallese women’s shoulders.

Sunset came at sunrise—the Japanese fisherman aboard the Fifth Lucky Dragon

saw a great red sun implode the pastel waterscape.

What myth was this—this sun?

Coconuts that once took their sweet time dropping

fell all at once. They fell out like teeth, the islanders said.

Those would fall out too, like little browned stones

from a water-logged cliff.

Back on the mainland,

rock & roll jangled over radio waves

and made girls scream, like Chuck Berry sliding his fingers up

the heated neck of an electric guitar.

In the control bunker, orders played out over tiny screens:

Navy men watched the cloud glide outward

like the gauzy trim of a ballerina’s tutu. First came the Bravo! Bravo!’s,

then the dying clap and heavy curtain fall. Like seasoned surfers,

they watched the swell approach and waited for a sign—

ocean, atolls, palms, bones, nerves—all liquefying.

Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States. The bomb was detonated on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands.