The khimarred woman
sings a five note lament
through cellophane,
Paleolithic stone,
a labyrinth of drywall,
hanging, rusted coils
Mississippi mud and the blood
in her throat
While the ghosts in Aokighara
the bones of my father
the unfed mice on the sewer grate
They hear her notes
as one hears a memory
It's like a flare, they think
Not the flare itself,
but the trail of magnesium
all that drags after the glow
the echo, a disembodied wish
futile as it may seem
a shattered lullaby
for the kaki tree
who peers through heartwood
to watch the farmers' hands
fetch her mango hearts, fifty children
from her languid limbs
their bodies tossed into
guillotine baskets
her leaves curl to their touch
It is too much to ask of any
one being.
The wind whirls consensus
Amidst the feeble proclamations
that “Happiness is state of mind,”
I incant in the basement
ancient prayers of survival.
Resuscitate, rejuvenate me
I was just a kid, fumbling through the dark woods
Witnessing the plumes of smoke
from the brutes laboring in the yardhouse
Saliva to straw
Paper and grass to wire
I've thatched a home in the brush
in the thicket where
I gnaw on my hands
and my back's against the morning dew
I hear the eulogizing orioles
singing from their choral tome
soothing these baptismal lashes
in a canopy of pines where I wish
the starlings could carry us off.
