Matsura Emoto’s Collection of Rice

On Thursday, I boiled a pot of rice,
placed it neatly into three
separate air-tight containers,
and pasted words on the front
like
“I love you,”
and
“You’re a demon,”

and everyday,
I spoke those words
to the rice
as if
speaking them
to a friend, or enemy.  

By Saturday, I had boiled
two hundred more pots,
and the counters
of my home
were filled with
containers
which said words like
“My Angel,”
and
“Betrayal,”
and
“Destruction.”

And I was amazed at the results,
thousands of jars,
each spoiling at the same rate.

I wondered
why I could not save
even a single grain of rice.

Because she does not love death, as I do,
I read to her only poems
which did not mention the words
years or silently or ghosts.


My sleeping dogs lay around me
on the bed, the twisted covers
surround us,
bound around our forms
like years and memories,
but not ghosts.

I.

I awoke     with you(r)
voice)      lingering     in     the air,
remnants of dream    clinging,
scattered pieces of       planets falling
over      down      around.


II.

Every night a little death,
                                                              a prodding
of formless intangibility,
                                                              for example –
last night
                                                              gravity held us in orbit
above a planet

I became a block of black granite

and explained  

                                                             communication

occurs
                                                             instantaneously
across
                                                            great distances
universes
                                                            or lifetimes away.


III.

I poured some coffee,
thought about
        your plain smile,
          how smugly you said my name,
                                      (as if you owned me)
and
I realize
          I never lost you,
because
       my dead father would have said,

“You can’t lose something you never had.”


IV.

Every morning I wake, surprised
     at life.
                    being alive.


V.

Whatever Secrets the Dead Know They Keep to Themselves

Here we go round the thin shade of ‘morn,
a soft side of dawn. . .

A great hawk, six feet wide,
circled once and dove into an open field.
and rose, like a breath of smoke on fire,
his wings plowed draughts of wind
in invisible eddies –
a silhouette on starched earth.

Here we go round the razor of dawn,
a shade of a form. . .

And the field mouse, stuck in his talons –
fur torn open –
heart beat bled empty,
ascended also,
watched her home below,
become as she would soon be to…

(And a 1 and a 2 and 3 and a)
a never a nonono. . .

You shoulda seen the black crows
circling below,
eating her entrails,
while pebble black eyes (infinite alone)
remembered the field
(and a)

See we spin down the dark of the blood,
a sun a sun of smoke. . .

she might’ve dreamed
(of a 1 and a 2 and a)
of being back home,
a hole in the ground
(3 and 4 and)
too far too far too far

Patta-patta patta the blood on the lawn,
a home a stone a birth. . .

(7 6 5, a life is alive)
a sad man
(4 3 2, what to do what to do)
in a s h i t brown field
(and a 1 and a done)
died her death that day too.

Silence Came In, Filling Hollow Spaces


"I chose you because you looked easy to hurt," she said, and meant it.

"My lady," I quoted, "what a ragged meadow you have made of me."

"I cannot fall asleep next to you," her breath heavy with my sweat, "it's too intimate."

"I know what happens next, my life continues without you in it." I never said, but should have.