April 3 Smoked Alaskan King Salmon Bloody Mary

Something salty, fishy, spicy;

the flavor of a city

rimmed in the glory of the Sound.

Savor this freshness

artisan bottled glass

sweating with condensation.

Mary sings her absolutions

sings for a morning just begun.

April 2 Goats

You can rent goats now in Seattle.

Ordered on Amazon,

one-click landscaping

delivered by drones.

Grinding teeth

making cud of kudzu

on rocky slopes.

Nature’s weed eaters,

reed eaters, everything green feeders.

The swarming herd

clears swaths at minimal cost

April 1: Stuck

You can shake sugar,
shake-a shake the apple tree,
but you'll never shake like glue.
No-sir-ee, I'm gonna stick
the apple,
the stuck you'll never shake.
Gonna run my fingers.
Shake-a shake.
Tighter.
Squeeze.
Because, because
your long black hair
keeps us tied.
I'm gonna grizzly bear
like wild horses
because I'm
stuck, glued sticks
hiding.
In the kitchen. In the hall.
A team of kisses
gonna do you good.
Ain't gonna take a tiger
from love. Grizzly kissin'.
That's how love is gonna keep us tied like side shakes,
like yes-sir-ee
Uh-uh-uh.
I'm gonna stick his daddy's side
tree starts stuck
gonna squeeze apart
Good.

In Memoriam Saeko Kawahara

For my Grandma Sy

Summer 1998

The clam digger squats,

intent upon her hole

filling five empty gallons of soy sauce

with filter-feeding rocks.

She remembers

chanting nam-myōhō-renge-kyō every morning,

the gong praying for peace and for happiness.

Maybe this is a memory of war,

of eight years old in

evacuated Nagasaki, 1945.

Repercussions reverberate.

Oysters crowd around her

as if listening to her story

waiting in line to be cut and dyed

like so many little old ladies of West Seattle.

Her grandson thunders down the dock

prepubescent energy shaking loose 
waves meant for higher tides.

"Deni-chan. Comb he-ah."

Danny as in Daniel.

God is my judge

but not my interpreter.

No, He knocked down a tower

and turned tongues into trees,

contorting vowels unrecognizable

until only consonants remained.

The crossing of oceans splits syllables

forgotten across generations

but blood is saltier than oceans

and accents are heard

decades away from landing at shore.

I read billboards aloud because of you.

I have dimples because of you.

I have years of bowl cuts

and a love of unorthodox Thanksgiving dinners

and a grieving sadness every Valentine's Day because of you.

I was ten.

Your daughter tried to make

me read The Joy Luck Club

to understand you

to understand her.

I couldn't get past the cover,

but I could see her tears.

And still you sit there,

only now, you gather

dust on the bookshelf,

name engraved in the family shrine

across the Pacific,

your company oyster shells

painted with googly eyes

and plastered with striped feathers,

the kind of face only a child could see.

I am still thundering.

I am still making waves.

Digging down to my roots

I am looking for you.

And I am finding myself.

Down with leg constrictors

I can tell by the fit of my pants:
this was not a mistake.
Thighs like Thor hammer the pavement
into bronze medals of miles achieved.
They do not quake with desire.
Thunderous is the rip and shred of denim:
in shaping them, they shape you.
Seams impossible to contain, I know.
This is why I like wearing shorts.
They carry the burden of this heavy heart,
dragging if only to keep the forward momentum going:
screaming through the lactic pain
and numbing ice, always in search
of that runner's high.
Sometimes it's easier to just smoke weed first.
Too many rest days.
I can tell by the fit of my pants
and the hitch in my lungs as I try to push through.
This is why I like wearing shorts.

For Nora and Holly

The dogs are chasing squirrels,
attentive heads inclined skyward
at the slightest rustle of leaves.
Their company keeps -- with
all the familiarity of that one
box of cereal present in the cupboard
when you first moved in.
They exist as they have always existed:
flowing fur coarsing to and fro
along fenced-in boundaries.
It's a well-settled path they walk
from tree to gate to flower bed.
Lay down with me in unnatural green,
the water hemorrhage acceptable
if we let the sprinkler turn on all around us
and laugh off wet socks and underwear later.
They don't howl at the moon
the way we do: self-conscious and afraid,
but they aren't allowed to eat at the table,
read magazines,
or preen before the lies mirrors tell.
What is there to let out?
Reflections on the day?
Stories about squirrels?
New scents on the wind?
More running ensues.

Don't Date a Poet

Don’t date a poet

We’ll write you a hundred sappy sonnets

only three of which will ever be any good

all because William-fucking-Shakespeare

wrote 154 and bard is still a title we respect.

We’ll quote Pablo Neruda and Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

and eroticize you in ways you didn’t think possible

until you realize that innovative turn of phrase

is still a respected part of the craft

and all of us have this egotistical desire

to create something original.

The worst part though, is you’ll never see them,

because poets are hoarders of words

so… where’s our reality tv show?

Our documents folder and notebooks overflow with you

but you’ll only see a fraction. At least until

we’re up on stage shaking free psalms

like children under a cherry tree in July.

Dirty laundry is a synonym for inspiration,

because it’s an integral part of our truth.

We’re storytellers of the worst kind

lovers of the slant rhyme

perpetually unsatisfied because everything

is always still a work in progress.

And if half of us can’t even commit to writing in pen

because erasing makes editing easier,

what does that say about our human interactions?

Our text messages may be garbled

like a William S. Burroughs cut-up

or crafted like the haiku of Basho.

There’s very little in-between

unless it’s between the lines.

Don’t date a poet unless you can

put up with puns and keep

a thesaurus by the bed.

Our foot fetish is with a meter --

counting syllables to shoe them into neatly ordered lines.

Do you want to be another title in my next chapbook?

how about a thinly veiled metaphor for everything that makes me sad?

Seriously?! You - you don’t mind?

Then let’s get coffee sometime.

I know this great place down the street…

they host poetry readings every week.