From the series, Japan Poems.
In the hushed expectant stillness of red,
the wall waited for the day
it would no longer have to hold the girl back
or up, waited patiently for blue to pick up
where she left off to become the haughty moon
in the motherless sky.
Some curses last long, and longer still,
blurring boundaries bodiless to the touch—
the girl had had enough,
her infinity a troubling shell of itself,
a plaited trembling.
The girl’s secret assassins knew this well
and truces were out of the question.
In the smallest hours of waiting
to no end
the wall’s pressure
inevitably forced the girl
to break into a thousand small dark shrieking birds,
constituents of a maze now resolving itself,
with each bird bearing a piece of the girl’s lost name,
unlettered, fast-moving, placeless
in its origins
and spacious unbecoming.
John Biscello 