Founded in the fall of 1991, Laurel Moon is Brandeis' oldest, national literary publication. Each issue we publish features original work from undergraduate students.
During World War 2, Unit 731 was a research and development unit
of the “Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department” of
the Imperial Japanese Army. The euphemism for their human test
subjects was “logs.”
I am utility until I am not.
Church of science, pandemic, apocalypse, Operation
Geneva Convention, Operation Plague
Blossoms At Night. My nation. My nation thinks
I am a lumber mill. I am made of metal. I am made of logs, or that is what I’ll say.
I play like a young, curious child. I take apart this machine:
there they are, gears and wires. They practice on a log. A patient dissected.
Gears and wires playing like curious children; what would happen if we starved
the log for 48 hours before drenching it in cold? These gears and wires are good
citizens of their nation; logs falling; logs falling; look how many lives we saved.
There they are, there they are, taking their oath: First do no harm. May your reign continue, may
your reign continue.
Do you hear the way the metal breaks? Saw back and forth and take. See falling logs that crunch.
I am not a lumber mill.
I am utility until I am not. Liquid spurts from broken logs. It sizzles on my metal skin;
I am corroding; I am becoming
those three hundred thousand ghosts emerging from the steam;
I am every cog that killed them.
Grace Danqing Yang (she/her) is from Lexington, Massachusetts. She will graduate from Brandeis in 2026.