Burnished Bronze

This photograph is an abstracted detail of a clenched fist from a series of bronze statues by Yue Minjun. Extraordinarily popular, hundreds of people interact with the statues every day, burnishing parts of them to a fine metallic sheen.

But this poem isn’t about laughing statues, sunny blue skies, or a playful public. It is about the hardening of vulnerable boys sent to foreign lands, some to their death, some to return broken, none so hard as the steel they’re fashioned to be. This poem is a memorial to them.