Hung Liu. Strange Fruit: Comfort Women, 2001, oil on canvas, 80 x 160. Private collection. http://www.hungliu.com/comfort-women.html
Seven women, strange fruit, stare at you
Their eyes awash with tears dripping, cast downward
onto yellow straw hats, their fingers at rest
but for one, stern without malice, pulls you into paint,
a butterfly with purple and white wings
of unheard voices as comfort women unsurreal,
their lives forsaken in droughts, the moisture
of art in world war against women
who had no say for their humanity
or luck in the numbers 777
for fortune, wealth, prosperity
My sisters who had no say rise and speak
our black hair, our fingers afire,
their bodies in white dresses,
our bodies still to be our own.
Nellie Wong
© 2023 Nellie Wong
(Inspired by a painting titled “Strange Fruit (Comfort Women), 2001” by Hung Liu
This poem is included in Moonstone Arts Center’s anthology of EKPHRASTIC POETRY 2023. Ekphrastic poetry explores art. Using a rhetorical device known as ekphrasis, the poet engages with a painting, drawing, sculpture, or other form of visual art. Poetry about music and dance might also be considered a type of ekphrastic writing.