Ai Ogawa Poems

Hit Title Date Added
1.
Conversation

We smile at each other
and I lean back against the wicker couch.
How does it feel to be dead? I say.
You touch my knees with your blue fingers.
...

2.
Grandfather Says

"Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
...

3.
Riot Act, April 29, 1992

I'm going out and get something.
I don't know what.
I don't care.
Whatever's out there, I'm going to get it.
...

4.
Passage For Allen Ginsberg

Sunflowers beside the railroad tracks,
sunflowers giving back the beauty God gave you
to one lonely traveler
who spies you from a train window
...

5.
Woman to Man

Lightning hits the roof,
shoves the knife, darkness,
deep in the walls.
They bleed light all over us
...

6.
The Kid

My sister rubs the doll's face in mud,
then climbs through the truck window.
She ignores me as I walk around it,
...

7.
Disregard

Overhead, the match burns out,
but the chunk of ice in the back seat
keeps melting from imagined heat,
...

8.
Nothing But Color

I didn't write Etsuko,
I sliced her open.
She was carmine inside
...

9.
Passing Through

"Earth is the birth of the blues," sang Yellow Bertha,
as she chopped cotton beside Mama Rose.
It was as hot as any other summer day,
...

10.
Salomé

I scissor the stem of the red carnation
and set it in a bowl of water.
It floats the way your head would,
...

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