Sushi
Throwaway chopsticks, like our disposable conversation.
And you play with them both, as I watch with awe
thinly veiled as distaste. A little too thinly, perhaps:
I all but clap and dance when you use them to
pour and drink your green tea. Our great-great-great uncle
was health-conscious when he called on Auntie Tushka
with a bag of brown rice. But she just thought he was poor.
(Why have I never heard these stories from father?)
I play with my rice bowl, make cranes out of my placemat,
roll up my shirtsleeve and write a poem on my forearm.
I am jealous of your dark skin, your eyes, your dexterity.
I slowly unroll my sushi as I watch you joyfully eat yours.
I hate pickled ginger. I hate wasabi. I don’t eat fish or pork.
I hate you, brother, as your chopsticks deftly pluck up
my half-unrolled sushi from off my plate. Our food was
well prepared for this meal, but I was not. I was not.

We all nodded silently,
Knowing the truth of her statement.
Realizing our answers
Would have had small influence,
In comparison.

Later, when I mentioned it to my lover,
He looked up from his book
To better consider the notion.
“But doesn’t she know,” he said,
“That she is a beautiful woman?”

“And where is the happiness or purpose
Of pretty?
Enthusiastic, fulfilled, intelligent—
Youthful. These are better words.”
Yes, and the reason.



In the Style of Louise Glück
Do you remember the time I dreamt of our marriage?

            —You never told me.

Everyone, but us, was wearing
bridal gowns and tuxedos, remember?

            —Honestly, you say the most random things.
            I can’t recall. But, what happened?

I dreamed we were the only ones not
properly attired. Stop that.

I know you’re checking your schedule!

            —Hmm?  What were we wearing
            on the honeymoon?

Our honeymoon. Not the honeymoon.
And I said “wedding.” You never listen.

            —Well, what was I wearing? Did I have a face?
How can you be sure you were marrying me in this dream?

In the dream we fought, too.



Kindling for the Fire
Poetry is not edible,
does not satiate the stomach,
nor shelter its author.
Fountain ink, however
beautiful in its opaque intensity,
does nothing to slake thirst.
Paper is good for burning.

I know these truths now.

In the beginning
the word was everything:
power, grace, wealth, opportunity—
the reason for continuance!
Academia concurred. My students,
however, did not always agree.
Nor did my checkbook.
Paper was good for burning.

Education
(with its give, take, its
constant demand for motion)
was more satisfying.
A less egocentric role, yes,
but honestly, it garnered
broader comprehension.
Poetry, however enriching,
was nothing
to an ignorant audience.

In the end, edification
proved more reasonable.
And verse, merely
a device for continuance.
When uneducated:
Paper is good for burning.

I know these truths now.



Cavallaro
(Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire. —W. B. Yeats)
I miss Alexandra in my classroom.
Sitting on edge of desk, I recollect
The challenge in her questions,
The insight of her analysis.

Currently,
 
I am met with a sea of apathetic
Faces, broken only by wide-mouthed yawns.
I try to light a fire, but
I imagine them two-dimensional, paper thin:

Reduced to ash.

Listless, they are failing.
I am flailing!
Quoted Oscar Wilde to a wall of silence;
Jane Austen elicited no laughter.

I miss the smile, behind hand,
When her peers missed the obvious.
Alexandra, a confirmation of
Intelligent life and lucid lesson plan.

Half of my eight o’clock returned
Completely blank quizzes!
Can no amount of water fill
A bucket with its lid clamped shut?

While elucidating the various
Cultural, sexual, and religious overtones
In Rossetti, I succumbed to the
Back row staccato of yawns.

Nodded off mid-sentence—

Unnoticed. All right, today,
I introduce Alexandra: stimulating
Questions, insightful analysis,
Shining eyes!

Their laughter was unkind.



My Husband’s Brain Tumor
She came in so quietly. Stole
That which had taken us years to build,
But not before she
Vandalized and defaced.

The storehouse was the first to go—
Incinerated memories—
Then the structure itself.
I was unarmed and unprepared.

She was merciless.

I watched the temple crumble,
Seemingly implode—
And yet, studs and foundation
Stubbornly remained.

Remained, but beyond recognition.
She had been so ruthless.
I couldn’t let her continue, I had to
Stop the nourishment: to kill her,

He, too, had to be fully extinguished.



The History of Religion
I learned to draw pines early on.
They were triangles
Stuck on top of skinny rectangles:
Simple, geometric.

Later, much later it seems,
My eyes
Were opened to the range
Of conifers—

For instance,
The colossal redwood
And imposing sequoia
Dwarf the common juniper.

How the scotch pine
Unfolds
In expansive situations,
Yet grows narrow when confined.

And then, the beauty of
Asymmetry—
The stubborn survivor,
Windblown
On the side of some mountain.

Or the pitch pine,
Whose cones open to seed
Under the destructive power
Of flame.

Suddenly,
Triangles on top of rectangles
Hardly seemed
An adequate representation
Anymore.



She Reads His Journal
He left it there, on the nightstand,
And her ethics said she shouldn’t,
But as she listened to his shower water
She recalled…

How he sat up late at night and
Pored over the book; that time they
Both lay sprawled out on the bed,
Her eyes closed as he read aloud.

And she wondered if it truly was
A daily creative journal,
And if it were, well, then he was
More prolific…

She picked it up, from off nightstand,
And her fingers fanned the pages.
Her eyes saw only a spattering of ink
In a sea of white.

She replaced his journal, unread.
The relief: he also had inarticulate days!
But as she listened to his shower water
She sighed…



Phantom Kisses
I.  Slumber
Alone

I sleep on my stomach with my head turned
toward my hand, inches from thumb sucking and
childhood night terrors.

With you

I sleep on my side, folded into you.
Holding your hand.

Away from you

I sleep on guard, thinking I’ll smile in my slumber,
murmur your name, and awake on the red-eye flight
to the laughter of passengers
as I kiss the air where your neck should be.

II.  How She Lingers
The marriage fell apart. How? Did they let it?
Who knows how these things happen, except
slowly, over time.

He cursed, yelled, ran out his anger over the loss
during lunch. But at night,
he tossed and turned on my pull-out couch.

His mouth pursed in a kiss that was not returned.

He spoke her name, shuddered, and reached
for the familiar head that was not
on the other pillow. He broke off,

mid-reach, at the cold touch and rolled over.
Their marriage may have ended, but his mouth
had yet to forget her.


Shiroma Nakai (a sonnet)
Time is written in the curve of your eye,
and history as well, preserved and nurtured through
the centuries like your family tree, a bonsai
steeped in such rich soil it flourished like bamboo.
Many have noted your silence and mistaken it for
weakness, but Japan is in your bones—
a quiet strength, the eloquence of metaphor!
People are paper but you are origami, intricate folds.
Your knowledge is ancient (to my pale gaze)
severe as the cut of the Kimono you wear.

Wisdom, yes –but your heart? Vibrant, ablaze!

Entrenched and truthful, your love is a prayer.

Your inner beauty runs the length of your figure

like the brush of a sumi-e artist, across rice paper.

Sestina

Asphalt, taxi traffic, he doesn’t have the time for pleasure;

his seconds are dollars until five. And tonight, Katie, she

wants to dine in Chinatown, dance, but

her analysis needs to be edited, polished, read

out loud. Tonight, anything

loud, distracting  —The novice dissecting Milosz! Amputated poetry!

In the silence of evening he appreciated poetry:

Rusack as pillow, constellations for verse; the pleasure

of split wood, as it crackled and hissed in the fire —anything

solitary or harsh. Masculine imagist! Yet once printed she

is raped of power, the poem suddenly feminine when read.

He cannot stomach such vicarious an experience, but

Tavern brawls —stench of blood, liquor, cigarette butts—

these too are poetry,

Not only to be lived but also to be read.

Whitman understood! From a nameless whore, such pleasure

pen on paper rustled; did she

whisper vulgar verse? Of him, did the whore remember anything?

Now Emily, she loved God; nature; Susan; anything

written by the Brownings. Loved Amherst but

rarely left her room. Instead, she

wrote letters colored with dashes, exclamations —prolific poetry!

Why leave her room? Every pleasure

was there to experience in a book. Emily chose to read.

Dr. Hinnefeld said, “I cannot believe you haven’t read!”

He walked out of office, voluminous texts in hand; anything

written in verse, he ate it. Ate his words. This not pleasure:

Work. There exists no absolute quality of exist— Free verse. But

why did it come so easily to the women in his life? Cadence: poetry

that did not hang itself on rhyme! Why? Because she,

She

did not read

poetry

for anything

but

PLEASURE!

Katie, she knew what verse encompassed: anything.

Reading wasn’t the excitement or beauty of life, but

the poetry of life parenthesized! That was the pleasure.