Cloud Forest On montane roofs, Veil-thin sojourners Serpentine through green Flightless birds — Myriad crowns perching One-legged, spreading Multi-tiered wings Plush with plumes now Dripping fresh With the gilded bath. In the plumage larders, The green birds set to Spin their sugary fares, While at it, Gazillions of their Tiny lungs Are humming the Three […]
Seed tōgarashi / omoikonasaji / mono no tane the red pepper / I do not belittle / seedlings ~ Bashō I keep a chestnut in the breast pocket of my secondhand leather jacket. When I picked it I thought of (I don’t know why) my mother. The last time my first husband and I made […]
REDRESS After Junichiro Tanizaki. Give us this day your problems. Allow us to torment ourselves about shadow and beauty and good taste and we’ll swap all that we’ve got for one hour in the life of a tortured artiste who wants to sit in a fancy lav and listen to a mosquito. We’d leave the […]
Birth Mother We are standing in front of the mirror, my daughter and I, brushing our hair and being vain when I think of the doctor’s question: “What was her birth cry like?” I don’t know and never will. She is fine, or will be, I know. But looking in the mirror and into her […]
The Beaching The pod of whales beached themselves on Rutland Island, chose the isolated sweep of the Back Strand to come ashore. My grandmother in her final years would have understood. Those long-finned pilot whales suffered some trauma, became distressed and confused. And so for her that winter when told her grownup daughter had […]
