Rick Noguchi

No, I am not deformed. I wear these socks Because I haven't any gloves, And my fingers are bitten with frost. They feel like stumps. Luckily, I finished covering The citrus tree with sheets of burlap. Before darkness, I will light a smudge pot Near the mummified trunk, Then anoint my hands in a blue salve. Yesterday was cold But the freeze is on now. I must remind myself Not to lick any cars. Mr. Nishizawa, a house over, Told me his nephew Lost a fourth of his tongue For that reason. Years ago, The rosebushes were ruined to a freeze And have never come back. If needed, I will stay up all night And pray, will let the hoarfrost Burn in my chest. My grandfather Ate the yield from this tree After he died. I saw him.

Steel horses nodding In the petroleum field are beasts That suck The crude of earth. They have lived here for as long as I Remember. This moment, I smell wild incense: Heather, abducted by a desert wind. Its growth hides The rain-carved ribs of the foothills. Evening swallows The city fasting on late fall. Years ago, after hearing the story About a boy who lost Both legs while playing on an oil pump, I was dared to straddle one. All my friends were there to watch The Pacific behind me burning with dusk. The brute lifted me to the sky, Where I merged with the twilight, A warm breeze embracing my back. None of them noticed The world stopped to breathe. When I looked, they disappeared. Nearby in pink-flowered bushes Someone found The girl who’d been missing for weeks. They stood in awe, the body Decomposing, while I rode The slow bucking animal. Two months later, off the same pump, A man dove, An imperfect swan into night. He landed in the dirt gully Breaking the soft, white wings He never had. Today, I catch in my hand An insect charged with lightning. It tickles The obscure scoop of my palm As I hold it to my mouth and explain A wish so simple By morning I will have forgotten it. I release The bug to a desert wind That is racing toward the sea, A brutal dryness in its wake. Fire in the hills everywhere.

After Kenji Takezo fell from a wave, The turbulence of whitewash confused His sense of direction. He breathed in When he should have Held tight. By accident, he swallowed The Pacific. The water poured down his throat, A blue cascade he could not see. He felt in his stomach The heavy life of the ocean. It wasn’t funny, but he giggled When a school of fish tickled his ribs. He went home, the surf not rideable, It was no longer there, The water weighted in his belly. That night, while he slept, the tide moved. The long arms of the moon Reached inside him pulling the Pacific free. When he woke the next morning, He lay in a puddle of ocean that was his.

That boy, the champion breath holder, Kenji Takezo, lost his title This year to Mack Stanton A retired truck driver New to the area. Held in the town swimming pool Thirty-five participants inhaled Deeply all at once Submerged the depth. The contest went on into twilight. One by one each person Came up sucking air. Kenji was the town favorite. We wanted him to win again. He trained so hard, It was the only real talent He had Other than surfing and making Trouble. When he surfaced Second to last Gulping the night Then vomiting water, We were disappointed. He was doing so well. He had his lucky twenty-pound brick Cradled in his lap. It kept him down. But that trucker Mack was too good. He read Comic books, aloud, underwater. We watched from the bleachers His laughter bursting above him. Kenji saw this too. He never had anybody Read to him Not even his mother, And he wanted to hear What was being read What his opponent found so funny.