Something Japanese



                                                                                 "The mind wants to rest its reasons

                                                                  against the framed snowstorm it keeps inside

                                                  the living room, caged in Zenith or something Japanese." 

                                                                                         —Alice Fulton,  " Silencer " 



Ssssh, don't wake her, napping over there

against the far frontier of her appetites.

Wildflowers pressed between the leaves of her book

have more presence than she, good as earth

to remember.

                   From life to afterlife is not tragic. Open

and spit, please. The form was as natural as my taste permitted.

Charts were immobile, not changing. I liked them all,

the sounds I made that day, good with figures, smart and tough,

a native to the land I walked upon.



                   Dismissive of her poetry, he found the fields

too wet for planting. In this hall where I am speaking to you,

you hear my voice, and together we confront the possibility

that poetry is radically different from all prose, that our borders

are leaky, that a little insecurity is good for us and for all living things.



                                               A balthazar of champagne, s'il vous plaît.

Or didn't you hear me? I say, "Mango," and the word hangs in the air like a basket

of apples on a crisp November morning.

                                                       Take an egg, for example.

I offer you one. Just reach out now and take it. Your sake is almost warm.



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