by GABRIELLE OLIVER
Call to Cutting
“the truth is “the family” is always an event of some violence.“
-Zadie Smith
Slice yourself
to
pieces,
you from
the ghetto
and be breathing
with a knife
pressed to your skin in
violent events
In
sections,
places where they divide
humanity,
live,
consciously,
on your throat,
the fragments of pain –
that drain you of your own blood
Tanka X.
to my father, ridiculing the speech patterns of women of the diaspora.
when you mock part of
the tongue that is your daughters,
is their mother, too
hysterical and laughing,
they will carve out their own mouths.
zannenda
“What a shame.”
my grandfather, on measuring and comparing my Japanese tongue to that of 2018 Grand Slam Singles winner, Naomi Osaka.
It
seemed like they were darting back and forth
across the green,
courting my country
those
foreigners
that looked nothing
Japanese.
when
that gaijin girl’s face was on NHK,
filled every slot in the Rising Sun
until late afternoon,
I
thought she looked identical
to the one we’d been housing
and feeding for spring.
both
had that unfathomable reddish-brown
as if they’d been burned, worked outside for too long
– hardly feminine.
the
icon the dark spot on or flag,
the one who’d spent longer
outside
was
supposed to have more of
our blood,
was supposed to act like us
but
could not understand an interviewer from her own birthplace,
nor could she say much more than
“sorry, I don’t know”
could
not say
“hello” and “thank you”
like a woman should.
even that one
of no relation to me – fruit of a past marriage’s
mistake with rotten skin – could speak
better than that.
What a shame.
Tanka IV.
for treating vergetures.
stretched past desire,
he construes your body’s lines
reveals naked words
on your skin. he holds binds your
unread pages with his hands.