Kimiko Hahn

This is a poem on my other’s body, I mean, my mother’s body, I mean the one who saved her braid of blue-black hair in a drawer when I was little. Meaning one I could lean against — against not in resistance. Fuzzy dress of wuzzy one. Red lipstick one. Kitchen one. Her one to me, bad-ger bad-ger — or so I heard. The one body I write on like Daddy’s blank studio wall with my colored pencils. About seeing her skin as she bathed in the afternoon — was I five? It was summer. Then today’s winter where again I call that bath to mind. I cannot leave her body alone. Which is how I found Mother in the bath escaping the heat of a 1950s house, Father on a ladder with blowtorch to scrape the paint off the outside. • badger badger • The sun in the suburbs simmered the tar roof over our rooms in the town where only wasps lived inside paper cells beneath eaves and roots. And they hurt very much, the wasps. • Now I am sixty. Sweet as dried papaya. My hair, a bit tarnished, my inmost, null. Memory is failing away as if an image shattered to shards then recollected for a kaleidoscope: I click the pieces into sharp arrangements — grouse, crow, craven — no, now, my own daughter turns sovereign

I wish I knew the contents and I wish the contents Japanese — like hairpins made of tortoiseshell or bone though my braid was lopped off long ago, like an overpowering pine incense or a talisman from a Kyoto shrine, like a Hello Kitty diary-lock-and-key, Hello Kitty stickers or candies, a netsuke in the shape of an octopus, ticket stubs from the Bunraku — or am I wishing for Mother? searching for Sister? just hoping to give something Japanese to my daughters? then again, people can read anything into dreams and I do as well. I wish I possessed my mother’s black lacquer box though in my dream it was red, though I wish my heart were content.

Without the sun filtered through closed eyelids, without the siren along the service road, without Grandpa’s ginger-colored hair, Mother’s lipstick, Daughter’s manicure, firecrackers, a monkey’s ass, a cherry, Rei’s lost elephant, without communist or past tense, or a character seeing her own chopped-off feet dancing in fairy slippers, or Mao’s favorite novel about a chamber — the scientist of sleep has claimed that without warm blood a creature cannot dream.

“To find a connectome, or the mental makeup of a person,” researchers experimented with the neurons of a worm then upgraded to mouse hoping “to unravel the millions of miles of wire in the [human] brain” that they liken to “untangling a bowl of spaghetti” of which I have an old photo: Rei in her high chair delicately picking out each strand to mash in her mouth. Was she two? Was that sailor dress from Mother? Did I cook from scratch? If so, there was a carrot in the sauce as Mother instructed and I’ll never forget since some strand determines infatuation as a daughter’s fate.

When the puppy snarfles for breakfast I wake to the radiator gurgling then feet crunching the reticent snow. Before I was born, Mother sewed her own suits. What do her ashes know? • Father shoved snow off the supine roof. Mother crafted Christmas ornaments: glue and glitter and red balls. No tinsel, no angels. Her death started in the living room. • For bonsai, pliers the size of a nail clipper, spools of wire and a fist-sized rock. One bore a petite pomegranate, never to eat, not to touch. Her death began with a baseball bat. • In the vineyard, he secured the strongest cane from training stake to fruiting wire. Pruning with handsaw and lopper. He’d leave a spur for the next season. He shoved her away with direct objects. • In a cold snap if one pipe freezes, the rest may freeze as well. Even before the puppy snarfles. Even before a baby brother arrived in the misleading car in Mother’s arms. • After the war, after she met Father, she smoked cigarettes but didn’t cha-cha anymore. She’d light up and blow smoke out the apoplectic window. He found the ashes on the sill. • Fireflies blinked for mates or prey outside the savvy window of my own first home. On the stereo, a bluesman cried, I need my ashes hauled! The dress was too smart to wear. • I tucked away our baby’s pink layette in circumspect mothballs for a christening that never took place. As well, a doll that Auntie crocheted. More than anything, I love tidal pools. • I know her ashes are at Father’s, lost in his charnel of junk mail. He claims that thieves have stolen that box, his knob cutter and root hook. He says, remains aren’t ashes anyways. • Winter stripped everything to the limb and dejected nest. No angels, no crèche. I don’t know whose recollections are suspect: after leaving Maui, Mother learned to swim. She loved tidal pools more than anything. • In my kitchen, the logs blink in the fire — through blinds, the wind blusters and the browbeaten trees creak in the orchard. The rain pours then stops for sun. If he lost Mother’s ashes what more could I stand? • Omusubi tastes best on black beaches. Since Mother never learned to swim, did she watch her five brothers from a blanket? On the intransigent subway, I don’t know if I’ve passed my station. (His mother said yes—) Iron: I bit my lip again. • Mother showed our baby how to sift flour and how to crank an eggbeater. After Father lost her, he barred everyone from the rooms and the yard where at night long red worms slither up from the ground. • Her ashes know: before the puppy snarfles, Father shoves snow off the supine roof; for bonsai, use pliers the size of a nail clipper; in the vineyard, the strongest canes; in a cold snap, a hair dryer on frozen pipes; fireflies blinked for mates or prey outside while I tucked away my baby’s pink layette. Her ashes know their box is in the living room where she didn’t cha-cha anymore. Where has winter stripped everything to the nest? In my kitchen, the logs blink in the fire and I know omusubi tastes best on black beaches. She knew to show her granddaughter how to sift flour.