Hush now, can’t you see how it’s starting? And there is so much we have yet to do. In the ledgers of my youth I found myself positioning the cellophanes directly over whale noise, but it was nothing I could have come to on my own. Only that my parents left me a sense of consequences. What is the county of your birth, and then, you are here out of reason? Stand there. Careful on the precipice with the boom. Have I ever told you the story we call Tangle Dragon Arrival Ear; was it a Wednesday and we were drinking beer, and the rest of the team was sleeping or gathered outside of the windows? Well, I was out walking among the thousand flags of the hanging valley. I thought, oh, I could be such an object of love, if I were an object, if my face weren't always cast in the projection light. Hope you don't get seasick, but even so. Look, I was mean before—here, I was supposed to give this to you later, but you can have it now. You really will be impressed. It was nothing I could have come to on my own. That I wouldn’t have wanted this. That there are not enough words for dream.
© 2008 Ryo Yamaguchi
is an MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where he is also the Assistant Editor for Dislocate. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Tin House, The Cincinnati Review, The Notre Dame Review, DIAGRAM, New Delta Review, Natural Bridge, Faultline, The Sycamore Review, and threecandles.
