Dean Okamura

this place

this place
a shrine in the land of my ancestors
far from the barrios of East L.A.
far from the beaches of Southern California

 

I am
the outsider
the illiterate — unconversant in my native tongue

 

resting
in the ancient forest
a heretic — not knowing the ancestral ways

 

                                                                      yet today,
                    there is a connection
                    a pause chained to centuries of pilgrimage

 

ancient chants
meant for the gods

 

touch my ears
enter my heart
find my soul

 

in the breeze,
a kami (Japanese spirit) greets me

 

                                                  is this heaven?

 

---

[1] World History Encyclopedia, Naiku Shrine, Ise Grand Shrine, Ise, Mie, Japan (2017)

Why did you name me Yuri?

[1]

Yuri-chan, there was an American painter
named Georgia O'Keeffe, who created
beautiful paintings of flowers in the 1920s
when you were born in 1926. Have you
seen her paintings of flowers?

 

In death's chambers, we examine our lives.
Perchance, we drift into the sphere
of someone we've known. How does
the soul gain in appreciation of life?

 

Lily heard her mother, Terumi, who died in 1938,
after eight decades of separation on earth
and uncounted time in death's wanderings.

 

She asked her mother, why did
you name me Lily? Doshite? Why?

 

Terumi said, So, nice to talk with you, Yuri.
But Lily grew impatient and interrupted.

 

My American name is Lily. I know it means
the same as Yuri. But why Yuri?

 

Why didn't I get a beautiful name,
like my sister Emi (Blessing Beauty), or
like you Terumi (Shinning Beauty)?
I am just a flower! It was not fair.

 

 

[2]

Her mother was wise and serene, like
Kannon, the benevolent Buddhist deity.

 

Yuri-chan, did you see the beauty in flowers
captured by O'Keeffe-sensei?
She saw beauty in Japanese culture
as many hakujin (white people) saw as well.

 

Ask yourself, why did you enjoy playing Chopin?
Was it to show off your gifted fingers?
It's not mechanical. It's from the heart.

 

You learned the art of Ikebana
at Tenrikyo Temple in East L.A.
(I learned to forgive that church for ruining my family.)

 

Why did you stop flower arranging? Stop playing piano?
Just take up bowling. Just score over 100 pins.

 

I was happy to see you did well at line dancing.
It must have improved your Obon Odori, nee?

 

 

[3]

You are one of Georgia O'Keeffe's lilies:
quiet, graceful, mysterious.

 

 

Lily smiled with her little-girl dimples.
Hai, atashi-wa Matsuda Yuri. (Yes, I am Lily Matsuda.)

 

          – For Terumi Tadokoro Matsuda (1898-1938) and Lily Matsuda Okamura (1926-2022)

 

***

-chan (Japanese term of endearment), Doshite (Why?), -sensei (teacher), hakujin (white people), Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement), Obon Odori, nee? (Summer festival dance, yes?), Hai (Yes), atashi-wa (I am)

 

---

[1] Georgia O'Keeffe, "Black Iris" (1926)

[2] Georgia O'Keeffe, "Lily Turned Away" (1923)

[3] Matsuda Terumi (1921) (2022) 

Jeffry Jensen

THE GALLOPING WESTERN DELUSION

The chew of tobacco did not do the trick.

Blood kept gurgling out of the hole in his shoulder.

It was the Kid who trembled into the darkness.

Just another outlaw from Coffeyville was all that was mumbled

by the best and the brightest of Lincoln County.

Garrett came out of his bedroom with gunpowder on his britches.

No one could blame the stars for turning pale pink at midnight.

The Indian Territory was growing restless with the influx of saloon dwellers.

A shuffling specter of marked cards and greasy fingers pulled on the weekend.

Barely nine and going on twenty, the Kid boomed

into a mining camp boarding house with a manner befitting a tarnished spirit.

Camp Bowie was gorging on plunder and armed immigrants.

Nothing could be resolved by trading for diseased blankets.

We all lived with aliases in daylight and reveled like savages in heat.

I took refuge on a parleyed ledge of doom and snapped my neck

out of joint before the Apache ponies could circle the moon.

Carl Stilwell AKA CaLokie

Thanking the Birds*

While Swift Eagle walks on reservation

he hears sounds of boys playing in the bushes 

“There’s another one. Shoot it!” shouts one boy.

He pushes through the bush and sees 

a boy holding a BB gun while his buddies 

stand around a dead chickadee, robin 

and several blackbirds.

“Ah,” he says, “I see you have been hunting.

Pick up your game and come with me.”

He leads them to a ground where they can 

build a fire and cook the birds.

Before they eat, Swift Eagle says, “It is important

to thank the birds for the gift of their songs, 

feathers and bodies as food.”

As they eat he tells stories.

After his last story, he says, “You know the Great Spirit

gave the gift of life to everything that is alive.

Life is a very sacred thing.

But our Creator knows we have to eat to live.

That is why it’s permitted to hunt

to feed ourselves.

So I understand you boys must have been 

very, very hungry 

to kill these little birds.”

 *A found poem from Keepers of the Earth, Native American Stories & Envir- onmental Activi 1 -

ties for Children by Michael J. Caduto & Joseph Bruchac

CHRIST AND NEWTON*

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the 

temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,

    and they will lift you up in their hands,

    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put 

the Lord your God to the test.’ 

You guys have been fighting this losing battle 

against science since Galileo 

You would not look into his telescope because it was clear

the sun revolved around the earth, not vice versa

You rejected Darwin because his theory said humans were not 

created in the image of God but only another species of ape

You believed the story of Adam, Eve and a speaking serpent 

was history not myth

You were confident the world started thousands of years ago

not billions because the Bible told you so

Despite record heat, melting ice caps and rising seas, you didn’t 

believe in global warming because Trump said it was a hoax

You acknowledged the coronavirus outbreak was a “real issue” 

but suspected the media was using it to hurt the President

Over a hundred had died of the pandemic in Louisiana but you 

feared not the trek to New Orleans to preach the gospel

As long as you walked in the light of the Spirit of life, surely

no germ would attach itself to your body

You missed the point of the second temptation when Satan tried 

to con Jesus into showing his faith in God by defying gravity

As long as you walked in the light of the Spirit of life, surely

no germ would attach itself to your body

You missed the point of the second temptation when Satan tried 

to con Jesus into showing his faith in God by defying gravity

He didn’t take the tempter’s bait and put God to the test by 

taking a leap of faith from the temple’s highest point 

But you did

and became another COVID19 fatality

 *Based on the article, “Christian pastor who thought COVID-19 is just ‘mass hysteria’ among 2

the first in Virginia to die from virus” Written by Sky Palma / Raw Story March 27, 2020

Jackie Chou

Screen Doors

Mystery lurks 

behind rattling doors

Silhouettes swing 

on rice paper screens

Are they spirits of the undead?

Their voices have become my own

inhabiting the air I breathe

shadows I cannot shed

Specters at the Rosemead Community Center

I was once a girl,

warm-cheeked,

hands soft to the touch.

You'd ask me to dance,

and I'd sway and swirl

to the push and pull

of your arms.

Now there is no wind,

no shadow,

no rays of strobe light

on the floor.

Nor is there a sequin,

a bead,

a strip of chiffon

from somebody's dress,

a fallen crystal

from a tiara.

There is no footprint,

no glitter 

from shoes,

just my memories 

of father, mother,

older sister,

attending parties 

together,

their faces

glowing in my heart

like specters.

Marianne Szlyk

Neither Heaven nor Hell but the Afterlife

For Felino A. Soriano

In church I listen to the dead soprano
and wonder what you would have made of her song:
words first shaken, then scattered, and last transformed
into voices in a gutteral tongue known
to none in this town perched on a mountain.

I think of your poems scrubbed from the internet,
wiped away like warm breath on a car window,
spoken words shaken, shattered, and then transformed
into ash. I cling to bright horns you wrote to.
But this music is not jazz, not your music.

But it is music. Having driven past old
mountains overrun with trees, the audience
listens as a clarinet mimics frenzied
traffic with trolley wires overhead,
as girls play typewriters and actors parade.

You are here, one of the dead we still
think of, who do not wink out until the last
loved one, last reader dies. You wander the aisles
like the composer Berio, stunned to be
in this plain brick church in the Blue Ridge mountains.

Not yet effaced, you’ll walk with the audience.
You brush past trees that do not grow where you lived,
trees filled with blue jays that do not sound the same.
You feel shaken, shattered, and transformed into
a ghost who comes when called, one who cannot choose.

 

She Lives With Ghosts

-- after Raise the Red Lantern (1991), dir. Yimou Zhang

Staying out of the sunlight,
with unbound feet, Songlian
paces the cobblestone courtyards.

She lives with ghosts:
the sound of a flute’s practiced quaver,
the chirp of an indoor cricket,
Chinese opera sung before dawn,
the voice of the concubine
the Master murdered.

At night she enters Meishan’s quarters
and makes the red lanterns blaze.
They bleed like a young girl’s foot
onto the blue-black courtyard,
onto the white snow.
 
The servants say that this house is haunted.
But the red and black masks on the wall scowl at her.
She cannot fool the ghosts.

In plain sight of both masks and servants,
she winds up the gramophone,
the clashing cymbals, the rickety strings,
the voice of her fellow concubine,
the voice of the Master’s chief victim.

But she cannot fool the ghosts.
She cannot fool herself.

Originally published in Black Poppy Review

 

Girl in a Subway Station, 1992

She knows she’s a rich girl. She knows
she rode her own pony while dressed
like a cowgirl, like her mother
who rides trails on bone-dry mountains.

She could have gone to Paris where
her hair, fragrant with shoplifted
shampoo, was noir, not just dull black.
She’d be hiding her father’s eyes

in vintage sunglasses, a pair
out of a black and white world.  But
she’s here in the dim, deep subway,
yet another specter in black.

True, she wields a pawn store guitar to
match her shapeless hair.  And this axe
is faster than the express trains
that blow through this station.

Her voice is unlike the other
women’s who sip coffee, stare
blankly. Her voice is not her mother’s
that swoops up broken-rock mountains.

Her voice is her own.

 

R A Ruadh

Before I sleep

Death is not hidden here

every village church has a cemetery

holding histories not quite forgotten

Baptisms and weddings look out upon gravestones

as if to remind that life is precious

so cherish it while it lasts

Between the hamlets small family plots

are reached by winding trails

through woods and fields

Generations sleep together

albeit perhaps more peacefully

than they lived

I wonder if I should start one such

under a tree with a nice view

and a bench to sit on

Just in case some wanderer

should happen by

with miles to go and weary feet

you know

to keep me company

for a little while

Power lines

A flickering candle

in the window of my neighbour

across the street and down the road

a small spark in the bleak night

bravely lighting her kitchen

as the strong winds rage

between our homes

powerless against

friendships

Power outages are common during hurricane season in the Maritimes.  But all is not dark.

CLS Sandoval

Fed Up 

It was the last time he would hit me.  I told him as much.  I had taken his punches and endured his bruises for decades.  I was through telling myself that this was what I deserved.  He left in a huff for work this morning.  That’s when I started making my plan to put an end to his ongoing abuse.  He always expected his dinner ready and warm after work.  Tonight, I didn’t disappoint him.  Even put a little something extra in his portion. 

He said it was good 

He faded with every bite 

Those pills were perfect 

Just Outside 

Footprints left outside 

She doesn’t believe in ghosts 

But the door’s ajar 

 

Late Night Swim 

Deep in the water, I decided to open my eyes.  They always told me that these waters were enchanted.  I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a mermaid or a siren, but instead, some kind of monster started chasing me.  I had a moment to take a breath from the surface when my foot caught on it.  It was either this deep-water thing or the current pulling me down.  I struggled and splashed until I realized I was wasting my breath, being pulled down. 

Nothing enchanted 

No, not that kind of magic 

More like angler fish 

ellyn maybe

 I HAVE FALLEN 3 TIMES

I have fallen 3 times

        once while Barry Manilow sang It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve.

        once on a welcome mat.

        once while sweeping.

I am in physical therapy for the last fall.

Just recently I stopped the crutches and the knee immobilizer.

I noticed people were nicer to me when I was on crutches, nicer than usual.

I mean strangers.

Being a bit of a wild-haired, hippie-looking; pin-wearing, hat-headed women,

        I tend to stick out.

Total strangers asked me how I was doing with the crutches under my arms.

Young hip kids didn’t stick their tongues out at me.

It seemed people could relate to an injury

        even if they couldn’t relate to my Free Peltier pin.

People could relate to a hobbling hippie better than a room full of anarchists

        and purple wallpaper.

I wonder how it would have been if I had been in a wheelchair.

People can see themselves easily on crutches.

Not as commonly can they see themselves unable to stand up.

People are frightened by what they can’t see as ever happening to them.

Fear turns to hatred almost simultaneously.

People hate seeing what exists and is possible.

People do many things to cover up their vision, refusing to see.

During a recent war, people whispered right in front of me about my pins.

The pins were not specifically about a particular war.

They were political pins I wear all the time.

I don’t know how well the people could read the pins.

They stood in their corner clucking their prejudice at me,

        their right wing stained with blood, talking about the merits of body bags.

They saw me as a threat to their comfort zone.

I was a symbol of a circus.

I was rope burns of a trapeze artist.

What if everyone actually is a one person pied piper?

They didn’t like the taste of the air after my song.

During the war I felt people almost decide to punch me.

I brought out extremes in people.

This was a day a hermit cried on my shoulder and said didn’t Nietzsche say

        whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger?

He was playing frisbee with his dog but instead of frisbees,

        they threw records

The dog caught Highway 61 Revisited.

The man caught Déjà Vu.

I saw a stack of Joni Mitchell records.

Some Leonard Cohen.

Some Jack Kerouac.

He said it’s good karma to fill the air with music.

Music not missiles is my motto.

        Think it’ll catch?

I said it makes more sense than crystals.

He said the war gets to me.

I used a record needle to shoot up.

Now I realize I was just trying to breathe chords of joy again.

I thought injecting songs would make me happy.

All I had to do was be aware of the music and I became music.

Pretty trippy, huh?

He said outrun the liars.

        They are so bent on mind control.

        They are banning War and Peace.

        They claim there never was a war.

I spent a day plastering flyers and shouting through a megaphone,

        “Don’t feed the Pentagon!”

When people treat each other without compassion, we are adding to the military build-up.

There are no shortages of wars.

The war against the fat woman is a war that’s been waged by a diverse army,

        from the idiot to the should have known better.

I say the war against the fat woman because this society

        has different agendas for different genders.

The fat man has a beer belly which shows he has the luxury to sit in front of the TV

        watching football games.

Acceptable American behavior.

The fat woman has no self control.

How can she expect to catch a man looking like that?

How could she let herself go that way.

Many times I have been teased for my looks or my weight or anything

        and everything by men void of conventionality themselves.

They were looking for an easy scapegoat.

They needed to seem taller by stepping on someone.

Whether we like it or not,

Psychology spins insight in a collision course with our minds.

And sure I understand the doctor, the corporation, and the government are in cahoots

        as they hand me a weight chart and say “Ellyn, you are ruining

        the economy and the landscape cause you refuse to be like everybody else.”

What percentage of fat is destructive to health?

What percentage of teasing and hating is destructive to health?

Just what is normal?

I once read a book so great everyone should read it.

Shadow on a Tightrope edited by Lisa Schoenfielder and Barb Weiser.

It’s how fat separates humans.

It’s how fat brings people together.

It’s in finally seeing with your heart.

I once read a book so fantastic called In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen.

It’s how race separates humans.

It’s how race brings people together.

It’s in finally seeing with your heart.

I once read a book called Nice Jewish Girls edited by Evelyn Torton Beck.

It’s how sexual preference separates humans.

It’s how sexual preference brings people together.

It’s in finally seeing with your heart.

Hey I’ll spare you:

I’ve read a lot of books.

I hope people realize painful as my falls have been, they don’t come close

        to the falls I’ve experienced when being knocked down by others.

Robert Fleming

 

Joe Grieco

EULOGY INSTRUCTIONS

Try to fit my eulogy on the backside of St. Jude’s holy card.

Tell them I worked insincerely, though often impossibly hard.

Talk a little about my wealth, made by trading old books for hope and youth.

 

If the lion was unhappy, that was not my fault.

I barely knew the lion.

 

See if anyone applauds the story how I pissed off God.

He had me in a strangle hold

And yet, I kept my soul.

 

Inspire the mourners, get up off your asses, that sort of thing, let’s make some noise.

Hold up high my Runner-Up trophies.

Belt out the song “Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”

Make everybody sing along.

 

Close with this memoriam:

When you see a moth berserk against a candle flame,

It’s just my specter spinning.

It’s the unheard thunder of a new beginning.

It’s desire trying to catch fire.

 

Antonio Campos

MEAN STREETS

Paradise Alley...

Suddenly,

A Shot in the Dark -

Scream,

Man in the Shadow

Running Scared > > >

Night of the Demons...

On the Yard,

The Blood of a Poet...

End of the Line---

Fade to Black.

Alicia Mathias

 

ELEVEN GEESE

After i drew them/ the flock flew fast from my open hand/ honking through Autumn/ while i wondered what they might be saying/ i traced their echoes/ through mid-air/ while the night's setting/ sun turned our whole sky pink/ where beaks still released/ staccatoed notes/ till their long throats became faint/ and i flapped up/ following/ their disappearance

Jim Babwe

 An Attempted Ballad for the Surfing Madonna

Suddenly, she appeared

on a concrete wall--

the first person in the history of the world

to surf beneath the railroad bridge

on Encinitas Boulevard.

Radiant and beautiful,

she carved the face

of a truly glassy wave

accompanied by a message

in glowing gold--

Save the Ocean.

Clothed in a swirling robe

(she never needs a wetsuit)

hands held together closely--

the microphone for prayers to God--

she's never said a word of complaint

to those who referred to her

as nothing more than graffiti--

never uttered a word of protest

when she was forcibly removed

and hauled away to live

in some indoor place,

away from the ocean

she obviously cared about.

We know it's usually a good idea

to get permission,

and some would say

it's a good idea to think ahead--

be smart.

But when you're brave enough

and guided by the Good

you already know how tedious

it can be when waiting for a commission

or the blessing from an officially unholy division--

where some believe you need

committees and the government

to get things done.

I don't think I'm the only one

who believes that approach

is almost guaranteed

to take too long

while it tries to figure out

exactly how to surgically extract

every element of fun.

For a length of time,

the artist remained anonymous--

unknown to most of us.

But when Patterson stepped up--

discarded invisibility,

he addressed the issue

with articulate civility.

The City robbed him of a sum of money

and he reluctantly took Madonna down,

but did she stay down?

She certainly did not.

Resurrected, she's now surfing

the south side of the street

on permanent display.

Silently, she surfs her favorite break

while backed-up enthusiastically

by many in the city

while hundreds sit in awe behind her

eating pizza and spaghetti.

Let her ride

her big blue wave

and remember why

a work of art is not a crime.

Artists don't belong

in court or locked up into cages.

The rest of us understand--

she's a local surfer girl,

a work of art--

a creation for the ages.

Karen Pierce Gonzalez

Kali

Winter Solstice

By yule fire 

we friends circle, 

talk of night ghosts

 

we keep at bay

by making paper lanterns.

Fueled by candlelight,

 

they kite skyward.

Orange-streak tails

form a runway for the return of spring

 

while we

share berries sweetened by frost

and tell stories of bear waking up.

Pauline's Portal

Last night in sleep

I saw a blackbird on a wire outside a church. When the Sunday morning doors blew open, it  flew in and perched behind cobwebs on a rafter in the back of the room; unnoticed by those gathered around a loaded AR-15 on the altar. Voices shot out; ricocheted off the walls, shattered stained-glass windows – bullet psalms blasted the silence; semi-automatic savior.

Phoenix

Lynn White

Only Joking

“It was just a joke”

you said

the night you came back,

a typical wind-up

that we should have known better

to believe.

Of course you weren’t dead!

It would take more than a few cigarettes

to extinguish your flame!

“Look”, you said,

“I’ll give you a hug”.

And you did,

a good solid one,

not spiritual

not virtual

but real.

So we all had a laugh

and a pint

and then you left

again.

First published in Bluepepper, May 1 2023

In Death

All that is solid

melts away

in death

consumed by fire 

or worms

transformed 

into so much dust.

Only memories remain.

And the spirit, 

of course.

So a wee shite in life

will have a mean ghost 

in death.

Mean-spirited in life,

mean-spirited 

in death.

And in memoriam.

First published in The Drabble, March 6 2022

On The Day Of The Dead

At last the party is over.

Friends and family are gone,

long gone in some cases,

though with us in spirit

earlier.

Now I’m the only one left

still dancing

all alone

until

the ravens came to join me

bringing with them more guests,

not only the souls of the dead

but the souls of those

we had taken care to exclude.

They’re with me now,

the souls of the damned

ready to join in the dance.

And they won’t let me leave.