Carrizo

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