THE BOOKSTORE
The bookstore was in the woods.
A creek was filled with leaves.
Reflections were not trustworthy
but still accurate,
medicinal Predictive.
The proprietor was Japanese. in his seventies
The bookstore was his house The bookstore did not end
I was in his living room
looking at his family photos. I was in one.
I was a baby. That is as long as it lasted
There was a glass menagerie. Spies, I thought
I remember one book stories, set in Shimoda.
The inn, the tavern was called Shimoda’s
The baby was not me
Babies live in craters covered in grass
houses buried up to their second stories
bomb shelters
The man sat at a large drafting table.
What is your name, I asked.
He wrote it in cloud-like letters, practically bubbles:
Da. Nagasaki. Nagasakida.
I wrote my name next to his:
Da. Shimo. Shimoda.
He was not impressed. The woods were filled with throats
no clearing No one read
Books
disintegrating at the base of trees,
emitting the smoke of spores
released from a mushroom crushed
by hand
to see? Can I live here?
The man’s voice primed an old mirror on the wall
red and
filled with shapes
I listened
to Japanese being spoken,
pretended I was deaf,
When I get to the end of the hallway
and enter the cafeteria
I will lose myself
will still be loud to myself
will not be following anybody
will be once again nameless
insignificant
without fingerprints
+++
THE DESERT
Every morning, I walk
into Mexico backwards
pink burning across the valley
an illuminated letter hovering
brains
that bind the city, green
and smooth with the skin (the sheen) of
a pistol
flames
or
spiders,
for example
To show what is the brain, what is beyond
the ravine
The skin comes down
where the corpse of a child
spirited
up
thinks itself first light upon
[an] irresolute cliff
fossils sleeping
in each septum waiting to be charged
that makes the cliff
bend
into a bridge Dawn
pulling apart
anesthetic America:
the country is not for me, I am not for it
the stanchion, made of the tendon
of all who have attempted to stretch their bodies across the current
against the arrows
imprinted with the face
of a mother
doleful, doting who has her head down
No forgetfulness resignation
Pink Mexico once perfumed the slopes of California
where all the effigies (miniature effigies) have been
cut loose
and dissipated doubling
the world in garbage
yet the human remains
intact executing
turns at the end of a runway
through a burning door a burning forest
onto the optimistic lawns
and daffodils of people
without sex
but scales and a tail
breaching sunset without ethnicity,
but aspiration
The eagle is repulsed
wants to dive off the tip of the flag, not
fly, but
let its small breast
drop
through its feathers
into the dry
riverbed
a gallery of ancestors
expressed the same idea
with their Shadows
aspiring
like mercury
The flag is sinew
and flesh a kind of foam
I understand
the anger: young, coming into the lining of
the womb reconstituting
neither fate nor face
but saints
carved out of whiteness
+++
ANCHOVIES
for Kou Sugita
Kou and I split the anchovies
He never had anchovies before
He did not ask What are they like?
We were like two
in line for
winter
If you are prone to happiness, anchovies will not bring you happiness
but like anchovies
climbing up rainbow falls
exist, and will accompany what already exists
in you if you are prone to unhappiness
only the rainbow falls will remain
charged with the anchovies
lack of endeavor
We stood among poisonous flowers,
talked about the foreseeable extinction of Hakodate
The fish are leaving The squid are lonely
Kou’s grandparents will die,
their house will be sold
new footfalls on the steep stairs
will be the sound, for a little while,
of grandparents entrenched in their absence
snow will emerge
to tide over the absence, as challenging
death working with knowing
death’s schedule
TYPO
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