Deborah Rocheleau is an English major, Chinese minor, and all-around language fanatic. Her writing has been published by Tin House, 100 Word Story, Flights, and Thema, among others. She is currently writing her third contemporary young adult novel. 

​                  Lightning Strikes

Waiting for the elevator to the Washington Monument
our tour guide informed us the structure is free-standing
No mortar holds all those marble blocks in place
but their weight alone anchors them to the Earth.

No nails were used
an architectural trait it shares with the Japanese pagoda
made not with stones like their Chinese equivalents,
but wood, paper, earthen tiles
and a heavy central mast, the shinbashira
that keeps the building upright through an earthquake
weathering a natural disaster
better than the Washington Monument.

The day after our trip up the Monument,
an earthquake rattled the Capitol 
sending a crack down through the free-standing stones of the obelisk
like the mark from a bolt of lightning when it kisses the top
of a stripped, branchless, cypress tree.

Although pagodas withstand the earthquakes
inevitable in Japan
random lightning strikes
are claiming them
one shinbashira
at a time.

Deborah Rocheleau is an English major, Chinese minor, and all-around language fanatic. Her writing has been published by Tin House, 100 Word Story, Flights, and Thema, among others. She is currently writing her third contemporary young adult novel.

Immigration by Deborah Rocheleau

Every word wants to make it to English
It’s very accommodating, they’ve heard
once you’re settled
Piñata made it
Feng shui
even Burka

For Tundra, though, things were harder
coming from an obscure background
raised on the snow of Norway
among reindeer herders
He longed to immigrate, even as the dream
seemed a melted ocean away.

Then came a political shift, someone pointing out the benefits of a diverse language
how thought was limited by a starved vocabulary
one word stifling the imagination
While speakers of languages with six words for snow
skated icy circles around their one-word counterparts
The idea, though faulty, inspired measures 
to stockpile words 
snatched here and there from foreign languages.

Thus Tundra arrived
and established himself in the scientific jargon
and thesauruses
of one of the world’s most widely spoken language
He has arrived, only to find himself alone, the sole immigrant 
from Sami, his mother tongue.