Despite the seven men of American Legion color guard,
the high school kids’ snare drums and tuba,
one antique fire truck,
and five Cub Scouts with one of the fathers marching alongside,
this poem is longer than the parade.
Had a line without a poem with a horse on fire.
Thought, I should write that down before it’s gone.
Worked the door last Halloween past afterhour,
reading Oliver Stone’s dour script for Conan
on my iPhone, thought about what goes unmade,
how there must be unbearable solitude in achievement.
Best not to speculate. Didn’t the Barbarian’s creator,
Robert Howard, die from self-inflicted wounds,
quoting lines from ‘House of Caesar’ in the West?
There must be a thousand big goons in a boomtown.
When a man thinks about the past, he becomes
kinder, Andrei Tarkovsky said. I suppose
it’s the look of compassion you see on stallions in public
monuments, the bowed chin, on bit, bones in
lingual tension, or behind the restrained pose horseface
Conan assumes in Frank Frazetta’s illustrations.
I practice it in flashes on the backbar’s mirrored glass –
something that can take a hit, my gait as, my heart as.
I fake I’m watching Eoghan cut gain onstage
or the Melbourne Cup on TVG. FanDuel.
I learned the horses doing nights a yearlong,
working the door unlatched, letting Denil in again
to mop gore from his face, giving him shit, my shirt,
as though brute strength’s its own costume.
You might say Conan was a product-of-his-world like
real punters talk about conditions of the going –
the green turf goes you hard & heavy, good, or good
to firm, -to soft, soft – pliant enough to fall through
to the underage of earth, stirring in its soaked
fur like some antediluvian beast. man, though,
naked, big, and dull as I’d look in the Hyborian Age,
I could forecast a foal. I could make its book
a line without a poem like my life for hire.
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She pulled up in a big-ass van. You’re reminded of the green Dodge window van she had when you moved back from Florida the summer you turned sixteen. How she let you take it and a bunch of kids, mostly cousins and neighbors, over the bridge to the McDonald’s on the highway despite you being a new driver. Even threw in cash to get everyone something. Said to bring her back a vanilla shake. That was years ago. Now your own kids are grown and gone. You haven’t seen her in thirty years, maybe more. The week before, you got in touch, asked for this meeting. She picked another fast-food joint. This one out on the interstate. You want to give it one more shot because no one lasts forever; this time, this one last time, you’ll ask her directly. You’ve heard a lot of stories over the years, all incomplete and disjointed: all unsatisfactory. As she settles into the booth you think she looks decent for eighty, wonder if you’ll be slow to show your age too. You notice her colored and permed hair, that she’s a bit heavier than you remembered. Still, she has the same energy in her step, and those quick calculating and guileful glances, a look that’s common among a strain of your relatives. Full of the devil your grandmother used to call it. The conversation sputters off in odd ways. She tells you about her third husband who died a few months back. You never met him, wonder if he even knew about you. The happy-yellow color of the booth’s table and benches is disconcerting, makes you angry. The coffee is rancid, so when she goes to fetch a refill, you know that she is stalling. When you get to the heart of the matter, she is smooth, holds the tears until a couple of minutes into the story. Coming off a late shift at a diner, locked out of the house by a drunken husband, she made her way around the back to look for an open window when a man with a foreign accent attacked her. She took her car and drove straight away, fleeing Baltimore and returning three hours north to Pennsylvania. She issues a denial when no accusation has been lodged. People said I had an affair, she says in a lean-in whisper. It’s not true. She dabs her left eye with one of the coarse paper napkins she’d already fetched from the dispenser on the counter. She makes no mention of the “colored guy” who other relatives say called after her for months once she returned to Pennsylvania, the rumor of another relative who posed as the father, signed you over to the orphanage. You’ve done the math; you understand. She was young, living in a different time, a world faded into a ghost memory. You don’t begrudge her that. It’s the years of deceit that have haunted you both until this very moment, lifelong afflictions. You had come in search of your father, but you saw that he would not be forthcoming, not there, not that day. Within a year she gets sick, lingers in the hospital for weeks, and then dies. You do not visit her nor go to the funeral.
“Do you see this man? Alexander Luria?”
Professor Dunn pointed to a black and white photograph pinned to her office wall. The photograph curled at the bottom edge, and the curl had gathered dust. It was a portrait of a man dressed in the fashion of another time: trim suit, narrow tie, black-framed glasses, slick hair. His eyes held a steadfast, distant gaze. Fingerprints marred the gloss, which meant Professor Dunn had pointed to it before. The advice Erica Hashimoto was about to receive would be canned, rehearsed for a troublesome girl who did not live in a black and white world.
Erica was hungry. Crossing the campus on her way to office hours, Erica had passed through a cloud of good aromas. Freshly watered flowers, cut grass, a clove cigarette. Erica had wanted to add sunshine to the list. And more: the cafe on the plaza was cooking up something that smelled amazing. Erica had scurried past in heels, late as usual, but oh, she wanted a bite. Quickly she doubled back and bought a Mediterranean pocket-bread sandwich. Now she carried the cafe’s smell with her. In this sealed office, the smell floated from from her book bag. It stuck to her blouse and hair. Roasted chicken, sesame oil, garlic, tahini. Erica could practically taste it. She was starving.
Professor Dunn began. “Luria was a genius. We cannot imagine the forces arrayed against him in the Soviet Union. The weight of the bureaucracy, the political minders who shadowed him and inspected his notes. And how difficult were his test subjects, the illiterate farmers of the Ukrainian steppe? Exasperating. Lastly, of course, to have been so utterly in love. Perhaps, even in the Soviet system, love was untouchable, although it smacked of impropriety, an underling, after all.”
Erica gazed at the stacks of books climbing the wall. “Was he in Patterns of Language Acquisition?”
“Correct. Schema theory. Esoteric as the back side of the moon. You have to wonder who in the Soviet bureaucracy decided this was important work to do. Well, Luria thought it was important. Asking a farmer hypothetical questions about cutting down a tree—he was testing the use of the subjunctive, the mind’s pursuit of speculation—and farmer replies, ‘But why do I want to cut down the tree? We have plenty of firewood already.’ And thus I ask you, Miss Hashimoto: you seek a letter of recommendation, but I need to know something: why did you carve into my classroom desks, so bored, so restless, so capricious? What was your plan?”
“I didn’t—”
“I saw you.”
Professor Dunn was holding Erica hostage. Erica had come for that letter of recommendation. Now she wanted only to eat that pocket-bread sandwich. She felt torn. There was the promise of a good lunch, sesame chicken with tahini in pocket bread, or a letter that could change the trajectory of her life. She weighed the imbalanced factors tugging at her desire. She clutched her book bag tighter in her lap.
“Do you remember Luria, Miss Hashimoto? How the peasants of the Ukrainian steppe thought the question was so bizarre? Luria just wanted an answer. They couldn’t even grasp the question enough to proceed with one.”
“And?”
Professor Dunn leaned across her desk. “Don’t be dense. You ask me for a recommendation, but instead of accepting or declining, I ask you to tell me why you want this job. Do you know anything about international shipping? Do you know about the Noguchi Concern? You saw the lady at the job fair. Was she wearing white gloves? Did she smile at you? We have talked about context before. Well, this is not a desirable company, Miss Hashimoto, while your Japanese is highly in demand elsewhere. Here is another question for you: Do you even want your fate placed into my hands?”
“What do you mean?”
“You arrived late every day to my class. Don’t you have an alarm clock? A regard for time? Was it a boy? Was it a meal?”
Erica thought about pocket bread.
Professor Dunn’s gaze locked on Erica’s eyes.
Erica said, “I always did the reading. You know that.”
It was a boy.
“You scratched my desks.”
Erica did not say, I ran my fingernail over old scratches, timeworn kanji that translated to For a good time, call… and Just shoot me now.
Dunn looked back at Luria. “Tell me why you want this position.”
“Well, it sounds like a good challenge—”
She held up her hand. “Stock answer.”
“The language is at a high register, in real time, under field conditions, as you say—”
She smacked the desk. “Pandering.”
“There is nuance to negotiation. An art to it. It is—”
“This sounds better. Keep going.”
“—everything I love.”
Pocket bread sandwich.
The professor said nothing.
“My mom said I can make a decent living, like, all these Japanese companies are coming to America and taking over.”
“Your mom actually said that? Christ. Next question: why would you decide on me?”
“Because you’re my advisor?”
Tahini and sesame oil.
“Stock answer again. So let me tell you why you are asking me. You want your current authority figure, me, to approve of your advancement where you’ll work under a different authority figure. Has it occurred to you that I have a stake in this too?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you should fail?” Steeple fingers. Eyes closed. Professor Dunn seemed to be enjoying a private story.
Erica cut off her professor’s enjoyment. “I won’t fail.”
“You always were like a vessel.”
“I won’t fail.”
“What if you fall in love?”
Erica said nothing.
“Listen to me. Akihiko Noguchi’s father owes me a favor. This is how I redeem my favor?”
The professor’s gaze found Erica’s book bag. Could she smell the pocket bread? Did she want what Erica had?
“A favor?”
“Young lady, you don’t understand the world, only the words. There is a second meaning to everything. God what have we taught you women, you girls?”
Erica did not feel like playing along. “You should teach us to say exactly what we mean.”
“Excellent. But are you worth my special favor?”
“You’re confusing me!”
“If I recommend you, a passably competent interpreter, to the Noguchi Concern, is his obligation paid? The last girl—”
Erica said, “Is this about me, or is this about you?”
“It is never about you! The interpreter should be invisible in the room.”
“An interpreter is the sina qua non!”
“A paradox! Beautiful!” Professor Dunn smacked her desk. “I’ll write your damn letter. You’ll be perfect for the job. Perfect for him.”
“Thank you.” Erica didn’t even know what she was thankful for. She estimated escaping this office in five minutes. She shifted the loops of her book bag over her shoulder. She would scurry across the plaza in her heels, find a bench beside some flowers, and eat her pocket bread sandwich.
Professor Dunn held up her hand. “Wait. About Luria?”
“What about Luria?”
Shit.
“Well, there was an issue with his work. Even in Russian, his work wasn’t published until 1974. Sit down. You’re not going anywhere. Luria alludes to the political sensitivity of describing central Asians as having a child-like mentality, being so contented with their simpleton lives as to not even speculate on the hypothetical chopping of a tree. These were satellite republics, mind you, with a testy relationship with Moscow. Well, are you contented, Miss Hashimoto? Does that make you a child? What shall I write in this letter? You certainly had a testy relationship with me.”
“Is this the Soviet Union?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“My parents met in an internment camp, okay?”
“Are you contented, Erica Hashimoto? You’re a Sansei girl becoming a woman, rising to legitimacy, but does that make you content? Let’s zero in on that one.”
Sun and silence tugged at each other, a knotted, motionless tautology in the stale room. Erica’s mind broke free, to the loggia outside, light and shade, brick and stone, her heels echoing across the plaza to the bench beside the flowers where she would devour her meal. White box, pickle on the side. She would eat her sandwich and never come back. How to explain this to her mom. Four years at USC, and she maybe was getting the job? Maybe it would pay this much? She would need new blouses and skirts and shoes. Wear her hair up? No, her hair was so shiny slick, it would only slide loose again.
She really wanted that sandwich. She would gobble it down. Sated, she would wonder what to want anymore.
“Erica, dear, you think you’re supposed to be content, but desire can be swayed. No one is content.”
Erica felt herself loosen at “dear.” An easy word to give away, but the professor seemed to have meant it. The tone in her voice was gentle, not motherly, but gentle, like—
“Of course, there is also the propensity, prominent in Japanese-American culture, to mirror what is presented to you. Your wants and dreams do not come from within. What forms within you derives from without you. Especially true for a young woman.”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“Erica, you’ll be interpreting for a man.”
Erica said, “If I was contented, I would not be asking for this letter.”
Student and professor locked eyes for a second. Too long. Erica didn’t care about Alexander Luria anymore.
“I said I’ll write your god-damned letter. But international shipping can get gritty sometimes. You’ll have to manage.”
Erica said, “Kansha.”
Gratitude.
“You have no idea.” The professor waved a dismissive hand.
“So now I am the one owing a favor.” Erica stood, shouldering her book bag. She would never return to this room. She wasn’t even hungry anymore.
“That’s very good. Favors exchanged like coins…”
“The obligation owed to you is transferred to me.” Erica bowed.
Professor Dunn spun in her chair, in and out of the light, stirring the stale air. “Keep going with this. I like it. Favors akin to currency, transactional in nature, debts parlayed…”
“Are you saying that I am the favor?”
“Commodification of the woman? That’s going too far. Just don’t disappoint me.”
“It sounds like I already have.”
“Honey, no…”
Professor Dunn stopped. Another student was peeking in. Book bag, skirt, blouse, nylons, heels. Another pocket-bread sandwich in a little white box
Alexander Luria gazed, steadfast, but Erica wasn’t looking in the same direction.
Erica said, “Well, thank you. I really have to go.”
“Of course you do.” The professor resumed spinning her chair. She did not see Erica leave. Did not see Erica brush past the waiting woman just like her. Did not see Erica run.
This is the corner store, years gone now, where Mae, her left leg an inch and quarter shorter than the right, would hobble up the narrow and uneven wood floor aisles. She’d fill an order for a kid with mismatched shoes sent, note in hand, on a mother’s errand. Then another for the Camerons, old folks from across the street too infirm to make the seven-block trek uptown to the supermarket. The Stroehmann’s bread push bar, tacked to the wood-framed screen door back before Mae ran the place, is faded from years and use. A lighted Hershey’s Ice Cream sign, turned on in the dusk hours, hangs in the right-side window. On the left are the week’s advertisements printed on rectangles of thin white cardboard: Lebanon bologna, butter, and heads of lettuce are all on special. Just inside the left window, partially hidden by the rack of chips and pretzels, sits the old dark blue metal floor cooler. Once, when you were four, maybe five, your great-grandfather gave you a coin and let you walk a half block down the alley to the store. Your great-grandfather is old, older than Mae, older than the Camerons. You know his name is Jesse, but everyone calls him Poppy. He is the last German speaker in your family, and sometimes says things you do not understand, but when he talks to you, he leans in, like it is a secret, and you understand well enough. After you reach the store, you slide open the hefty lid of the cooler, rummage in its chill and dampness until you find a tall bottle with ridges and a red and white symbol: RC Cola. You give Mae the coin and walk back up the alley, the bottle cold and substantial in your hands. Poppy uncaps it for you, and you sit in a chair next to his in the front yard, feet dangling in the air, while you drink. And now, with all that has come to pass, you understand that those frozen moments are luxury.
Property boundaries overlaid with satellite imagery. Data Source: CAGIS (Cincinnati Area Geographic Information System) 2022.
A bundle of highway ramps snake and weave like veins
cut through the graded dirt.
Once parcels of prosperity for Southern immigrants,
they float above the freeway, ghosts ever haunting
the land that belonged to Black families,
taken by government officials, just one mile across the Ohio into freedom.
Three city blocks wide,
measured by the platt maps that still today illustrate the historic property lines
of every row house, social hall, and corner deli which stood here.
Welcome home to your back garden: a barren median, your church: a bent guard rail, your playground: asphalt divided by white dashed lines.
A neighborhood razed in the name of breathing air and dollars into
the dense urban grid. Today, a regularly clogged artery, lined with Semis delivering vats of light beer, processed chicken, and the American Dream to anyone still asleep.
