BRANDON SHIMODA


                                     



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 30