She is also an assemblage artist who follows the grain of tree bark, the threads in textiles, and endless streams of color. Her art has shown in several galleries and has also appeared in several literary journals.
The heartbreaking geometry of an origami heart
is there in the tri-fold red and white rice paper I stuff into the cracks of my four chambers to stop them from splitting apart. Asymmetrical sheets once square, now creased, slip into the seams, slide down beating walls; stick to the flesh of prayers.
Layered, diagonal and vertical lines swell; rectangular corners round out just enough for me to stand odd-angled, chest high in new dreams: grey grassland cranes, blue-tail butterflies, and wet, jumping frogs rise up from the crevices.
*after Restoration, Jenifer Yuriko Nogaki
In a Bird Cage (Haibun)
Strong coffee with cream, Ruby’s favorite. She slowly pours boiling liquid into her favorite cup, thick and hand-painted like her. Then stirs in condensed milk, easy to store in very small spaces. With broad strokes, she spoon-mixes the two until hot and cold meld. Hands rubbing the mug’s decorative buds, she whistles to her canary wake up. When it warbles back, Ruby sits on their shared plaid perch and sips as it sings.
winter blooms stay closed
morning sunlight too late
petals won’t blossom
Isotropic stardust: me
Behind a star in Hercules’s shoulder,
I hide from astronomer probes
searching to dissect, colonize
leaked radio waves, barely heard,
whisper there are cracks
in this constellation’s armor
I tightly hold his upper arm.
If I let go, I could drift into a black hole valley
or sink to the bottom of a frozen planetary sea
partially thawed by the heat of my despair -
I would be lost.
Beneath me, Earth— a pinball
in a game I no longer play—
pings against others in the Milky Way
my first home, once-believed-to-be my only home,
moves too closely to others, has boundary issues,
does not yield enough
As above, so below
the sages of that world explain
the constant push-pull; at first too small to be seen
my body rippled
from collisions billions of years away,
I space-swam to this kneeling giant—
nicked by asteroids, poked by scientific claims—
and now kiss his shifting seams -
love them, for their own fractured sake.
on track
sun and moon lights, wired together over a railroad junction, signal to flagmen
stop go stop go stop go
in the train’s coach, we whir by a town: flat walls, blank windows, street lamps unlit
stop go stop go stop go
the conductor eyes the horizon rising above parched sidewalks, unpeopled streets and stokes steam-powered engine; smoke
billows up –
stop go stop go stop go
the end of that line is a tree branch climbing into the sky,
mouths open, we see our reflections
in the rail car’s leaf-streaked glass
Among Phantoms
After Ghost Forest, Jack Bedell
I
If I do this
lay down in the boat
so as not to fall out
I will miss the silhouette
of nothing here
a thinning horizon
a cypress graveyard
haunted grove of leafless limbs
stripped by oil-greed
a wasteland
crows no longer murder
beavers no longer dam.
II
What trunked certainty I had
about regrowth wavers
without windbreak
lichen cannot cling
fog skirts roll up
sawgrass shores, naked.
III
Nature’s margins
are now muted
evolutionary prattle
rains from low-lying clouds
onto this skiff
spine absorbs water
hull heavy, I sink to the bottom
of what little I know.
Silt cradles me —
innocence rises to the surface
ebbs towards ghost forest
fingers trace bark braille
silent
stories remember being told.
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Still in the Sea |
