I remember the ice of a nearish glacier seeming to steam
Against the blue sky. One’s eyes grow hard and gemlike
In the Alps you know, not that I am from there
Not even close. Still. In the Alps even (especially?) the dullwitted
Develop raptor eyes. My grandmother worked as the maid
To a duchess in Warsaw while her husband was gassed at Treblinka.
Then the duchess died and she my mother’s
Mother had to find a new way to hide. Hide life
Is a phrase I’ve read somewhere. In a poem maybe. I keep
Wishing I were writing about tents, walls of rug,
Walls of yak felt, yurts, lying awake in my friend’s mother’s
Bed thinking THE TEETH IN MY HEAD THE TEETH IN MY HEAD
While my heart flared BIOS BIOS BIOS how could any woman bear
The rhythm—what it takes to sustain biological life.
I was naked except for culture like everybody else in my generation
I come from a broken home like they do and I hide it, acting serene
At the joystick in the command station of my so-called self
Except I try openly to hide only badly whatever it is I think is wild that I’m
Doing my best to reveal by not really hiding, though hiding.
A poet can be a permanent houseguest like Jimmy Schuyler.
A woman can be homeless to escape her homeless mother.
A white woman can get away with certain things.
A woman who does not want her spare thoughts to be consumed
By lip implant rippling butt implant wet tongue in the sushi
Flatscreeny gangbangs in a suntan might for example choose
homelessness
In order to pursue with some serenity her for example let’s call them
Literary researches, surveiling aristocratically only her own pathetic
Machinations, like one of the dogs
Shaped like Nazis in a guard tower in Maus
By Art Spiegelman while a countertenor
And a sackbut bleat Wikileaks Wikileaks and naked men
And men with hoods over their eyes and zappers on their peens
Quiver in citadels in which we The United States hid them. Yves Klein knew
That walls are sad: made to immure misery.
That is why he designed a house made of air. We only write
Because we’re nudists but not the kind you think but also not necessarily
Not that kind. Art gets
Exhausted which is why a temple, the idea of a temple, I need to go to a temple
Every now and again and in order to have a home
I had to play a trick on myself which is that it’s a temple, this house.
In a movie from the Eighties a man from California says
My body’s my temple. Okay well now in my dreams of domestic
Servitude I receive small pay. I get to go across the street
To contemplate the toiletries in an Alpine Seven
Eleven. Salon Selectives, Prell, Garnier, or Pert Plus.
My hair will look like shit. I don’t buy anything.
I go back to the kitchen to fish out of drawers three
Iron candlesticks. The dark lady who rages over the family
Near the high vaulted hearth where I slave over a hot stove
In nothing but a dirty t-shirt like a Thai baby in a National
Geographic photograph all gorgeous in the mufti of my total deprivation
This dark lady can only it seems be communicated with by me
No longer the maid, but—progress—household witch
Earning after all a salary however tiny; horse-whispering its deadest
homelessness
Most psycho old bitches, sweet-talking them down from the rafters, down
Out of tantrums unthrown, unthrowable by nobody me, the inverted
V of downward-facing liberty: when you have no choice but to try to
have chosen
What you never, never would choose. Sitting on a bench at the end of
my exhausted
Term like a regular grownup I pictured myself shampooing my luxury
Hair in some artsy shithole, mildew streaking the torn shower curtain
Lurching across the second expanse of poverty
My ruined imagination could manage: Well I guess I could join the
Israeli
Army. Why the fuck would you want to do that said
Somebody else inside my dream head. Pretty much
Dead by the time they were done needing me as their slave
I started to feel kind of American I mean like an adult sitting
uncomplaining,
Torso a plain physical fact over unquivering genitals,
Just meat on a stick with the vague sense that somewhere between
lavish femininity
And state violence lay a mediocre thing called liberty.
Still, to be able to sleep at all’s a procedure of waking. Everybody
Has to live somewhere being that we are here where most
Of us are not welcome. Did you know transcendental
Homelessness was a thing. But I dreamed this dream
On a physical mattress. On an actual floor in a room with a door
That I pay and pay for. If you write you can forge
A substance that is other than the woman of substance
You are. If you do it to such a point you can find
Yourself declining substance altogether. It happens. It is a danger. But there will
Always be the idea of a bath or a sleep in a bed or a dream
In the head of a woman who is even beautiful visibly
Or at least groomed, or somewhat fresh
Or like that most domestic of bugs the cockroach
Dragging his ponderous suit of armor across the floor
Or clean sheets when it’s raining and I love you so much
And I think Gimme Shelter, which is a movie I’ve never seen.
ADRIAN TOMINE
Killing and Dying
FROM Killing and Dying
YUKO SAKATA
On This Side
FROM The Iowa Review
TORU FOUND A GIRL sitting on the stairs in the midsummer heat when he came home from an early shift. Even from half a block away, she stood out against his decrepit apartment building. She sat hugging her bare knees in white cotton shorts, her long dark hair draped forward over both shoulders. The sleeves of her unseasonable denim jacket were rolled up to just below her elbows. There was a large canvas bag next to her, blocking the staircase. Through the afternoon heat everything shimmered uncertainly, and for a second Toru wondered if she wasn’t an apparition. The insistent buzz of the cicadas created a kind of thick silence, numbing his senses.
Upon noticing him, the girl looked up with a hopefulness that made Toru feel apologetic. Suddenly he could smell his own body. He had come from making the rounds restocking vending machines and hadn’t bothered to shower at the office when he’d changed out of the uniform. With his eyes to the ground, he tried to squeeze past her.
“Toru-kun.” The girl stood up. Her voice sounded oddly thick.
For a moment they stood awkwardly together on the stairs. A mixture of soap and sweat wafted from her. Up close, Toru saw that her face was meticulously made up, her skin carefully primed and her expectant eyes accentuated with clean black lines. He was slow to recognize what was underneath. But then he felt his heart skip a beat.
“Masato?” he said.
“Hello.” As though in relief she held out her hand, and Toru shook it automatically. Her fingers were bony but solid in his palm. “I go by Saki now.”
“Saki?”
More than ten years ago, in junior high school, she had been a boy.
Toru tentatively invited her, or him, or whatever Saki was now, into his one-room apartment on the second floor. He didn’t want to be see
n with her on the stairs. His neighbors were mostly single men of meager means like himself, and, with only thin walls between them, everyone did his best to keep to himself.
Saki took off her sandals and walked in, not minding the dusty tatami floor bleached from years of sunlight. Her toenails were painted the color of pomegranate. Next to the entrance were a metal sink, a two-burner stove, and an antiquated fridge that constituted Toru’s kitchen. The opposite wall had a closet with sliding paper doors where he kept his clothes and bedding. There was a toilet in each apartment, but the bath was shared. A small, tilting bookshelf and a folding coffee table were the only pieces of furniture, and the white canvas bag Saki flopped down in the corner became the third-largest item in the room.
Saki opened and closed the bathroom door and walked around the room once, as though giving it a quick inspection. She then went to the sink and tried the faucet. The air in the small room felt even more stagnant than usual. Toru considered offering her something cold to drink, but he didn’t want this unexpected visit to draw out.
“Sorry I don’t even have AC,” he said.
“Oh, this is just fine,” Saki said, and bent down to turn on the fan next to the coffee table. “I don’t like AC anyway.”
Toru glanced at the back of her shapely calves and noted a long-healed scar forming a startling trench on the side of her right knee. The first thing he had felt on the staircase was a knot forming in his stomach, a forgotten seed of guilt he didn’t care to inspect, and now it was threatening to grow. He hadn’t thought of his classmate once in all these years. But the longer he looked at her, this Saki, the more he realized that he wasn’t as baffled as he might have been by the transformation. He remembered the slight neck that seemed to reach perpetually forward and the dense, long eyelashes that used to cast melancholy shadows over the eyes. She was, and had been, pretty.
“So.” Toru cleared his throat. He had been staring. “How did you find me?”
“Oh, I just looked you up,” Saki said. “There are ways. It’s not that hard. Can I stay with you for a while?”
“Excuse me?”
“I need a place to stay. Just for a while.”
Toru looked at her blankly. He was still in his shoes, standing just inside the door. “You mean here?” he said. “Why? What do you mean?”
“I’m in this predicament. A relationship problem, so to speak.”
Toru felt the knot in his stomach become denser as he watched Saki drift to the open window. The only view he had was a narrow slice of southern sky between the walls of the adjacent buildings and the corrugated rooftop of a warehouse, but Saki gazed out as though at a refreshing country vista. Above her head hung boxers and socks and a thinly worn towel that Toru had hand-washed that morning.
“Well,” Toru said. “I’m very sorry to hear that. I do feel sorry. But I wasn’t expecting—I’m sure this isn’t your best option. I mean, look at this place. There’s barely room for myself.”
“Oh, this is totally fine. I’m not particular.”
Toru sighed. “Look, you don’t understand. I’m afraid it’s not fine,” he said. “I have my own problems. For one thing, I have a girlfriend.”
“That’s a problem?” Saki tilted her head. “She’s a jealous type?”
“No, no.” Toru flinched. “That’s not how I meant it. See, you don’t even know me at this point. I’m barely managing day to day here. I’m surely not the best person to turn to in your situation.”
“You don’t know my situation yet. You haven’t asked.”
Although Saki’s tone was matter-of-fact, simply pointing out his mistake, Toru was taken back by the truth of this.
“I don’t want to pry,” he said.
“It’s really just for a while,” Saki said, as though patiently reassuring a child. “I’ll of course cook and clean.”
“Don’t you have other friends?” Toru said. “Does your family know you are here?”
Saki frowned at him. “If I had a family who cared where I was, don’t you think I would go stay with them?”
When Toru failed to respond, Saki let out a small sigh and dropped her gaze to the floor. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “I just got out of the hospital and I’m broke. I need a little time to sort things out.”
“What, are you sick?” Toru said. “What happened?”
Saki bounced on her heels for a moment, fiddling with the hem of her shorts. “I was injured. Stabbed, actually, by my boyfriend.” She paused, searching for something on his face. “He didn’t know. That I was, you know. So.”
Toru blinked. Then he blinked again.
“If you want, I can show you the wound.” Saki grabbed the bottom of her shirt.
“Wait.” Before he could think, Toru found himself across the room, still in his shoes, and seizing her wrists. Whatever was behind the fabric, he wasn’t ready to see.
Saki was a horrible cook. When Toru came home the next day, she had prepared some curry, but it was straight out of a package. The vegetables were undercooked, the onion still tangy. She had added too little water, and the paste was not evenly dissolved. The rice was dry, even though she had used the same rice cooker Toru used every day. He was baffled that anyone could mess up the simplest of dishes.
“You shouldn’t worry about cooking,” Toru said, eating out of politeness and dripping with sweat. “You’re—a guest, I suppose.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble.” Saki had eaten less than a third of her bowl and was poking the vegetables around while Toru tediously worked on his. “It’s the least I can do.”
“No, really,” Toru said. “Look, I’ll prepare something simple after I come home. Okay?”
“Okay,” Saki said. “If you insist.”
Saki hadn’t left the apartment all day. When Toru asked, she said she had mostly slept, read some, and listened to the radio. She then added, brightly, “You can’t imagine how much I appreciate this. This is exactly what I needed.”
The night before, he had conceded his thin futon to Saki and slept on top of his old sleeping bag. He couldn’t bring himself to kick her out. Whatever sort of life Saki had lived since Toru had last known her he didn’t feel inclined to imagine, but he couldn’t help suspecting he’d had a hand in it. That life now all seemed to fit into her plain canvas bag. Everything that came out of it went back into it. If he were to pick up the bag and take it out like the trash, there would be no trace of her left behind.
For a few months at the beginning of eighth grade, Toru’s life had revolved around Masato. Before his childhood friend Kyoko had singled out Masato as her crush a few weeks into school, Toru hadn’t even taken note of him. Masato had been a quiet, fragile-looking boy who seemed to prefer solitude. Toru could only now surmise that he might have tickled maternal instinct in some girls. (“Don’t you think he’s adorable?” Kyoko had said. Toru had to search his mind to vaguely picture Masato’s face.)
Earlier that spring, Toru had watched with bewilderment as Kyoko blossomed into something mysterious and fragrant next to him. He was desperately hoping that she would see a similar transformation in him and realize that he was no longer the silly neighborhood kid she could boss around. But Toru was her best friend. It had been to him that she confided her feelings for Masato. It had been he who had to help her get close to this taciturn classmate. He was enlisted to create many awkward coincidences for her to bump into Masako. He had to ask him to lunch, where Kyoko would casually join; find out his birthday and shoe size; and walk home with him so Kyoko would know which route he took.
For those few months, Toru hated Masato.
“What is your girlfriend like?” Saki said now, as they sat drinking beer after dinner. “Is she a good cook?”
Once in a while, Toru got to take home canned drinks that had passed the sell-by dates. If the timing was right, he got to pick a box of beer. It was one of the very few perks of his job.
“I actually don’t know,” Toru said. “She’s never cooked for me. W
e never meet at either of our places.”
“Why not?”
Toru didn’t own a TV and was playing a movie on his old laptop, to have something when the conversation lulled. It was a black-and-white Kurosawa, something his girlfriend had lent him.
“Well, obviously this is not a place to bring a woman for a date,” he said. He turned the beer can in his hands several times. “And she has a family.”
There was a pause. “She’s married?”
“Yes.”
“Children?”
“Two. Boys, I think.” Toru sneaked a look at Saki’s face to gauge her reaction. She had her eyes on the computer screen, though he couldn’t tell if she was watching. “So we meet at a hotel. Just a couple of times a month,” he said.
“And eat at restaurants,” she said.
He nodded. And he willed the conversation to cease there. His older girlfriend paid for meals and rooms most of the time, with her husband’s money. He was not proud of it.
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