Doll

For ¥80,000
I could own
the loveliest little doll in the world:
black hair,
hands of alabaster,
eyes that look up just so – all soft curiosity.
O perfect legend,
if I could buy you, too,
would you be mine so completely?

Threnody

Sonnet LXXVIII: For Kurō

Does it make you angry, Specter,
this quiet crystal, cold and tame,
that we bathe with wine and nectar
and call by your unaltered name?
Are you flattered when your glory
is the center of the story
we dramatize in every length,
exaggerating manly strength?
Or are both the same? For neither
is true, perhaps. I like to think
of you as touchable, cheeks pink,
breathing, more alive than either,
but I'm mistaken, too, I'm sure,
so are you angry, Belamour?

Sonnet LXXVII: 先輩 [To my older classmate]

With a practical illusion walking
next to me, I have no need to carry
all reality along; the airy
pillars of the mind bear up with shocking
carelessness our candied tastes, and talking
soon becomes the object. Is it scary
how I bounce along without a wary
thought to spare for danger, scornful, mocking?
Maybe, but I think that's why it beckons:
freedom in this case is somehow safer.
My intense attention feeds this union
(so my prideful glance, uncertain, reckons):
cherishing the wine cup and the wafer
of platonic bonds, I keep communion.

Sonnet LXXVI

In the same way a red blossom
is not hidden by overgrowth,
your dignity has an awesome
superiority that both
shames me and makes me your lover;
it glows through the thickest cover.
This is why I want to believe
in preordination. I grieve
when I see myself; I wonder,
Do my eyes shine with that innate
excellence? Are my shoulders straight?
Can you look and see what's under
my skin? If I weren't something low,
wouldn't my inner goodness show?

Map

I feel the world should be much bigger
than it looks on a map--
but maybe if we killed the people
who build wounds in the gap,
the world would grow again, grow stronger
and move slower than sap--
and I would die for such a vision
in luxurious lap.

Sonnet LXXV

How could ever there be heaven
more beautiful than April wind,
warm and not too heavy? Seven
unknowing days ago, we skinned
knees and elbows on the shining,
damp cement, and seven pining
and lonely days from here, we'll miss
the icicles of winter. This
moment--now--today--is nearer
than heart; it worms its way beneath
the muscles, slips between the teeth,
glistens in the belly, clearer
than mirrored light. To be outdoors
in April purifies our sores.

Anthropology Lesson

From this side of the classroom, I can see
the Indus, dark and blue across the map,
sprawled out across the green that spreads from it--
a country far away, unknown to me.

The map is old; the ancient titles wrap
the lands that they controlled before we quit,
or told ourselves we quit, the rôle that we
embraced, then scorned as wrong--and what a trap!

I think of this and other things and sit,
my mouth shut tight while lies of liberty,
through ears left open to the windows, flap
and senselessly make promises of wit.