Childhood Reminiscence

A new idea
stalking a famous person writing
a book about it

Like so many
ruined fruit I planned
to tell you this

Before I died My parents
told me not to go there
Every day I went

To find the place
we left
a disputed country

Idea
left on its own
debris

Luminously dead
run we run
everything: daddy, tell us that

story again




Sun

access to reluctant landscape
maybe even the end
tears silently away
inverse commands, earth
splinters back

cigarette burn or
tobacco face world
drops out
sight bombs away

unwatchable pleasure
reassembled body helps
blood swerve sun
wrapped in blue cellophane
on a dirty sofa

Jane Joritz-Nakagawa majored in poetry at Columbia College (Chicago) where she studied with the poet Paul Hoover. She now lives in Japan where she is an associate professor of English at a national university. Email is welcome at janenakagawa@yahoo.com.

 
Copyright © 2003 by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. Copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that the editors are notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.