Brandon Shimoda

The fenestrate surface of the pond surfaces in old companions     snag ripples namely, Saburo I recommend his face for the pond museum above the fox’s skulking face the hare’s face, death’s polished stone the crane’s     larval pearl eyes transmitting the code for a sodden voice in the splintering reeds And when I say I recommend I mean the menagerie in the utmost dark saviors hung from supping trees gone the way of idiot flesh—where you were endowed with a chance, and fucked up Evening, I went down on the pantry, pried open a basket of rice cakes, grew partial to eating in the dark if only to concentrate the sound of walking through the wilderness at night, enlarged without people as wax I sleep in nectar When was the flora brass A woman kneeling among cranes Willows waiting for sticks to arrive to burn cranes from her body genital wind through which No, it has always been this way blooms erupting suspicion, husband making sure each dawn the sticks stay lashed to his back, the wood she waits for thin as blades, and cut as close To fallow soil sea dragon in hand proper, yes, though petrified crimson, pink, indigo, green purple and yellow     lotus cradle in the hedgerow I feel faint     exceptionally hot      here on the ground Should I be sweating this much? Should the sea dragon weigh so heavily? Bronze skin festooning the trees cutting a spirit loose? Carrion flowers slip from my hand

Not even the males and the men of the males make use of their pinched tongues to sing, not even the females and the women of the females, corollas stemmed to spray on end sing their ruddy stones The males and the men of the males feel the sea the ranch and the wheat, rice ears polyglottal weddings unseasonable lips one body to the next Indigenes displaced by indigenes displaced wherein the ranchlands, then the fields of wheat, burn to the crust The choice between taking the flowers-of-the-trees- to-blossom and the long-as-the-rocks always lands on the flowers-of-the-trees- to blossom— bouquet thrown hurriedly into the sun