Crisosto Apache

These words of two, three years ago returned. — Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, tr. by Will Petersen one day, Coyote sees Duck walking her ducklings, Coyote asks her how she keeps them in a straight line, Duck says she sews them together with white horsetail hair every morning and tugs on the line gently, until the horsehair disappears, that is how she keeps her ducklings in a row as usual, Coyote leaves smiling, she sees a white horse grazing in a nearby field, she plucks a few strands of tail hair and returns to her burrow the next morning, one by one she begins to sew her pups together when she finishes, she gently tugs on the horsehair and drags their little bodies along the ground, Coyote tilts her head in dismay and becomes distraught, she realizes she has killed her little pups

For E.P. Kazhe/Botella The dread, however, was not of death’s agonies. — Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, tr. by Will Petersen it is prohibited to whisper the names of the dead, as it encourages them to linger at the doorstep, and she has already lingered, far too long

For Edgar The submarine’s inside was dim. — Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, tr. by Will Petersen in my youth, I hitched a ride to San Diego, across chirping desert and distant night, I gazed upon a slow-moving dark, encasing a convex cerulean cavity each night, I stood beneath the sky for hours mesmerized at the perplex reformatory, twinkling lights of broken glass fragments spreading against a glistening sunset a faceless man behind a lost reflection of glass at a drive-up window informs me, too bad, you know nothing of your own past how far will I walk against the night? conforming to a captivity I had never realized some years later, under the kitchen table, they all huddle, as the rampage continues toward the back of the house, a clash of debris from the other room recoils and broken sounds escape the barricade of doors I remember I returned in 1970, all they remember is me sitting at the edge of my bed, with the war still in my hands