Ai Ogawa Poems

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.
...

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

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.
...

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

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

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

Today it rained vengefully and hard
and my men deserted me.
...

When the rooster jumps up on the windowsill
and spreads his red-gold wings,
I wake, thinking it is the sun
...

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

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