by Kimiko Hahn
And, speaking of pinches, she said:
Don’t let a boy into your purse.
But, what does a mother rehearse?
•
On Wednesdays, half the fifth grade
left for Catechism Class, each
to learn to save my soul
as if the chest, a cathedral. When
a cousin stepped out on his wife,
I called his other woman a buttress
and added, You’d best send her flying.
•
What I locked in my school locker
besides pop quizzes marked C,
a velvet coat, and Tiger Beats:
a locket. From no one.
Like evidence in a cold case file
of thirteen hacked-up call girls.
•
If I could visit Antarctica
I’d visit a penguin papa on his long-winded stint
warming an egg on his feet. Still,
a girl should not show her pieds ever
when around her father.
•
Yes, even in unkind terrain
the girl felt okay on a trek with a coyote
until they reached the apathetic border
and her heart broke off
its eight years of beating. The same
for the boy in the trunk. For
the hundreds of babies in tents.
I find the stories are the faithful ones.
•
After Grandma lost her riddled lung,
the raccoon ransacked emergency
boxes of powdered milk in the pantry.
Cold cases of Squirt remained safe.
And the word, safety? Think rubbers. Think patrol.
Think Glock. Then think accidental discharge.
•
I found that in the Isua supracrustal belt,
flora was frozen for billions of years,
secure until discovery. Throughout his home
Father entrusted his critical papers
to those catacombs of no recollection.
•••
Hatchlings
Though tough to experiment
on a crocodile in the wild,
laboratory research has yielded
that prior to hatching,
a little one begins to coo.
Why?
To signal to the mama,
start digging?
To cue siblings to coo
for a synchronous emergence?
Or to practice wheedling
for pastime or coddle? Or
perhaps to rehearse the menace
that even a crocodile must acquire?
Maybe, though, cooing is fun. How
to research what transpires
in the head of a hatchling
before it’s hatched—
and why we need to know—
might well be an intimacy
not meant to be trespassed.
•••
The Ashes
The puppy snarfles to be let out
and I wake to radiator gurgling
then feet crunching the reticent snow.
Before I was born, Mother sewed her own suits.
What do her ashes know?
•
Father shoved snow off the supine roof.
Mother crafted Christmas ornaments:
glue and glitter and red balls.
No tinsel, no angels.
Her death started in the living room.
•
For bonsai, pliers the size of a nail clipper,
spools of wire, and a fist-sized rock.
One bore a petite pomegranate,
never to eat, not to touch.
Her death began with a baseball bat.
•
In the vineyard, he secured the strongest cane
from training stake to fruiting wire.
Pruning with handsaw and lopper.
He’d leave a spur for the next season.
He shoved her away with direct objects.
•
In a cold snap if one pipe freezes,
the rest may freeze as well.
Even before the puppy stirs.
Even before a baby sister arrived
in Mother’s arms in the misleading car.
•
After the war, after she met Father,
she smoked menthols but didn’t cha-cha anymore.
She’d light up and blow smoke
out the apoplectic window.
He found the ashes on the sill.
•
Fireflies winked for mates or prey
outside the savvy window of my own first home
where I sewed a dress too smart to wear.
On the stereo, a bluesman cried,
I need my ashes hauled!
•
I tucked away our baby’s pink layette
in circumspect mothballs
for a christening that never took place.
As well, a doll that Auntie crocheted.
More than anything, I love tidal pools.
•
I know her ashes are at Father’s,
lost in his charnel of junk mail.
He claims that thieves have stolen the box,
his knob cutter and root hook.
He says, ashes aren’t remains anyways.
•
Winter stripped everything to limb
and dejected nest. No angels, no crèche.
I don’t know whose recollections are suspect:
after leaving Maui, Mother learned to swim.
(She loved tidal pools more than anything.)
•
In my kitchen, logs blink in the fire—
through blinds, the wind blusters and
browbeaten trees creak in the orchard.
The rain pours then stops for sun. If
he lost Mother’s ashes what more could I stand?
•
Omusubi tastes best on black beaches.
Because Mother never learned to swim,
she watched her five brothers from a blanket.
On the intransigent subway, I can’t recall if I’ve passed
my station. Metal smells of being fertile again.
(His mother said her social station—)
•
Mother showed our little girl how to sift flour
and how to crank an egg beater.
After Father lost her,
he barred us from his rooms and from his yard
where at night, long red worms
slithered up from the ground.
•
Mother’s ashes know: before the puppy snarfles,
Father shoves snow off the supine roof;
for bonsai, use pliers the size of a nail clipper;
in the vineyard, the strongest canes;
in a cold snap, a hair dryer on frozen pipes;
fireflies winked for mates or prey outside
while I tucked away my baby’s pink layette.
Mother’s ashes know their box is in the living room
where she didn’t cha-cha anymore.
Where has winter stripped everything to the nest?
In my kitchen, the logs blink in the fire and I know
omusubi tastes best on a back shore. I know, too,
she doggedly showed granddaughters how to graft flowers.
•••
charms ii.
Sympathy
When you spy a horseshoe crab
Flipped over on the shore
Right it gently in the tide
And with your kin—a true rapport
•••
Sparkly Things
Ephemera, mouse droppings,
pillows torn to feathers:
Father stays to nest
while the magpie knows in its bones
a hollow for flight
and a collarbone fused for stability.
Her col
larbone had shown off
pearls, lapis lazuli, the coral from Tibet.
The strands are buried here,
my mother, long gone. Here, too,
I flew down the stairs when I was a child.
He slipped a few steps
covered in ice and leaves. He hit his head.
He is not a bird.
•
Its collarbone was confused
with the one for wishes. I wish
he had not lost Mother
•
to that house where the calico
ate one of her own.
Do magpies commit such things?
Yes, and flip over dung
in search of beetles conjugating there,
a secret hoard kept in a cupboard. Funny—
now we know these crow-cousins
actually fear
sparkly things.
•
My two cousins flew to Mother’s funeral,
fogged with incense—
not as august as a magpie who discovers its dead
and summons the others to raucously convene
before flying off, done with their patter.
Also not like a magpie,
he doesn’t recognize himself in a mirror.
•••
The Cryptic Chamber
For authorities whose hopes
are shaped by mercenaries?
MARIANNE MOORE
The nautilus, altering little from its Cambrian form,
jubilantly paddles about
by drawing water with a siphon
in and out of her living chamber;
then jet-propelling, adjusting buoyancy, and diffusing salt,
she whirls along sand and rock. Unknowingly
my beloved gave me such a shell—
an endangered thing
as well as a house that holds a mother.
•
I love that this mollusk,
coupling, spawning just once a year,
and whose eggs take nearly as long to hatch—I
love that ancient Greeks named her nautilus
ναυτίλος ‘sailor’
believing she—or he—used two expanded arms as sails.
In my mind, crucifix or a child’s snow angel.
•
Since the opalescent inner shell
passes as pearl,
escalating its own slaughter,
my cabinet is no longer curious:
•
now, I’m satisfied with a hornet’s nest from the backyard,
snake skin found on a footpath,
coil of whelk cases from the local beach,
and, also from the beach, a stone in the shape of Jizo,
so like the statue we saw in Shibuya,
bobby pins clipped to its red bib.
a complex
“lustrous coil”
erects
buoyancy
•
Those logarithmic spirals, naturalists suggest,
echo the arms of hurricanes and distant galaxies,
taking fifteen years to mature, fixing
the prized creature to a marine list
of those soon eradicated or
left to natural history diorama,
art exhibit, jewelry box. I’ve already
spoken of my mother’s coral necklace,
inherited then stowed away
in my safe deposit box, away even from memory
until I turned in the key and there it was:
a whorl of sharp red beads
that fastened with what my father called sister-hooks.
(To the list of things soon to vanish
add coral and the Hawai‘ian language?)
a relatively large brain
like the hull of a submarine
can serve as a
parrot
•
a relatively large eye can
implode—like
home
•
After all, I believe Design is design.
Still, I can also believe that the order of the universe
—including the one in my hands,
a shell cast in calcium and, when swimming about,
whose eyes peer through tentacles—
is mathematically mysterious. But
I’m not so romantic that I can’t see
extinct as natural—
I know that but she’s lasted so long—
a living fossil
safe if it weren’t for designated squalor—
•
a dollar a shell to thwart misery, I get—
with baited depth
the
Landman
stunned perfect spirals
•
Cryptic
When seen from above, the shell is darker in color
and marked with irregular stripes,
which helps it blend into the dark water below.
The underside, almost completely white,
makes the animal indistinguishable
from the brighter waters near the surface.
This shell colouration keeps the animal cryptic.
cups and pitchers
begin a formal
horror show
•
the curved
arms of Florence turned
gold and rubies
into danger
•
I know I know—a dollar isn’t merely pedestrian.
I know that some sell the chambered nautilus for their living.
I know I’m guilty of such purchase
and do nothing to give away or give way
to the distraught
so soon there’ll be nothing left—
but I know that no Designer would have such eradication in mind.
I know, too, that collectors have a passion for panic—
•
Curiosities
A floating poem after Adrienne
A plastic wishbone
A pearl button inside a plastic baby mug
Strands of black and gray hair tied with embroidery thread—Mother’s?—I don’t recall—
Dad’s jackknife with mother-of-pearl handle (From his father? Did his father give him any thing?)
Plastic scrimshaw pendant of a whale, a souvenir from Lahaina before my sister was born
Harold’s scrimshawed whale tooth
A wishbone
A doll’s guide to Kiyoto lodged inside a walnut, a bracelet from an elephant’s single hair, a Royal Hawaiian matchbox of sand, a plastic compass taken from sister
Kabuki ticket stubs
Mother’s choker of spiked coral beads from Florence that I now possess
•
envoy
below the range of sunlight
the larger order of the universe
chambers
alarms
•••
Notes on March 10, 1992
Returning home on that March night, Father stopped at a traffic light, then turned left toward the parkway ramp. An oncoming car ran the red and broadsided them.
According to the detective: around 11 pm in a nearby parking lot, a group of boys, white and armed with baseball bats, threatened two Pakistani youth. The altercation whipped into a car chase, the two ran a red light and hit Father’s car. The white kids slowed to look, then sped off.
Mother had said, “I’m going to rest my eyes.” Father must have told me—but who knows since he doesn’t even recall the stoplight.
The detective informed me, “Your mother died instantly.” That EMS had attempted to resuscitate her on the road. It was raining.
He also informed me that Father was at Yonkers General. My sister and I drove up to find him in the ER. He asked after Mother. When we told him she was dead, he shouted No No No. Before we left him to nod off, he asked us to notify a colleague.
Two days later, she was at the hospital with a h
omemade cake.
Now, clearing out his house these decades later, I am surprised to find the ticket stubs, either saved or forgotten. I do know that somewhere in the drifts of debris there is a skull that Father had used as a sketching model. All during our childhood he kept it in a coat closet, but in recent years took it out to pass along to a painter friend. Eventually, he forgot the skull’s whereabouts but noted to the friend, “Probably still in its plastic shopping bag.”
Holding the Kabuki tickets in my hand, I ask myself why Father—with all the rubbish he has told us—has never wondered out loud if before turning, he could have looked one more second to see the car careening toward them.
Last week, Father did say that he and his brother were out of touch. I said, “Uncle died decades ago. When he was 27.” I did not remind him that his brother had shot himself. Nor did I tell him that I believed the skull was taking revenge—against Uncle having smuggled it back from the war, and against Father for accepting it.
I am not looking for the skull, but know I might stumble across it.
I know I would have believed that I’d killed her.
•••
Another Poem for Maude
What would her lips feel like—? A tulip petal? A porcelain bowl?
The last time I saw her she was waving goodbye as Ted and I drove off with the baby, already snoozing in the backseat. I saw her turn away to climb the three dozen steps back to the shambly house. Not her fault, the shambles. Not the fault of mice or the snow that settled into a crust on the flat roof.
Days later, Father took her to the theater. On the drive home, a car of teenagers broadsided them. Father cursed. Mother lay slumped on the passenger side. He didn’t realize she was dead.
