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I thump the tank with every word, then, bubbles the tank’s words, and I
should mention it is dark in there, the exhibit closed, and this is our forever,
even as the patrons fill the place Saturday after Saturday.

*

I’m going on an elephant ride. I have a little tea set. I sculpt the elephant’s
hairy skin into your visage, and together, friend, with the elephant thumping,
we move through our own caught space, and so we are permanent.

*

Or very old, secret, and full of little clickings, which are atomic,
that a thing exists in many ways, one our singing, which one hears
on the sojourns into darkness, the supply closet at the center of the week.

*

What an endless sort of trying-things-out, the neck frills, the one colored
like a rug, a sun of orange juice and a sun of milk,
that we may never be lonely, so even the prayers are full of sea grass and salt air.

*

And I hold the universe in my mouth like a plum, which she likes,
as she comes into the room. She tries to trick me with a dance, but I know
my duty: dark fruit, not a single other thing I can keep.

*

You know her, your mother, and you know that this is good.
That the leaves are a tremolo, that I jump and she jumps in alternating
succession, the yard good to us, as it has always been good, its day and night.

*

Just before I close the form I open the milk of my eye into the heavy ocean
where it will find you. In this you smell me,
and you see all the world that you have made in your dark sleep.

*

She sits hard against me in our big night, the city in its rhythm a gloriole
of vectors all about our heads. I eyeless enter her mouth,
and she unfolds her shoulders, and we are all three, submerged, and then, the next ones.

© 2008 Ryo Yamaguchi