Issue 3 – Winter 2002 – Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

Jane Joritz-Nakagawa

 

Childhood Reminiscence

A new idea 
stalking a famous person writing 
a book about it

Like so many 
ruined fruit I planned 
to tell you this

Before I died My parents 
told me not to go there 
Every day I went

To find the place 
we left 
a disputed country

Idea 
left on its own 
debris

Luminously dead 
run we run 
everything: daddy, tell us that

story again

 

Sun

access to reluctant landscape 
maybe even the end 
tears silently away 
inverse commands, earth 
splinters back

cigarette burn or 
tobacco face world 
drops out 
sight bombs away

unwatchable pleasure
reassembled body helps 
blood swerve sun 
wrapped in blue cellophane 
on a dirty sofa

 

 

Jane Joritz-Nakagawa majored in poetry at Columbia College (Chicago) where she studied with the poet Paul Hoover. She now lives in Japan where she is an associate professor of English at a national university. Email is welcome at janenakagawa@yahoo.com.

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