Kimiko Hahn

[I walked along]

            a golden shovel with Bashô

 

I walked along the parkway toward the

farm, the swerving traffic made the roadside

violently hum. The weeds suggested the hibiscus

Mother wore in her hair. No one has

asked for those flowers because it's been

thirty years since her death, since we'd eaten

tofu prepared in seven ways by

a monk. She liked to feed the blackest horse.

[autumn crows] #4

            a golden shovel with Bashô

 

the murder month lodges in autumn

when the sunset is riddled with crows--

this is when the raucous fly

into pinks and purples to

survey night shadows as it devours

what remains of us humans

[a wind blows in]

            a golden shovel with Yûgen 

 

My aging synapses lose expression so a

charge is less likely than a wind.

And memory blows

--images are blown--in

this twilight. Yes, a haze

takes over the skull where even this

full moon misses the evening.

Kimiko Hahn casts a wide net for subject matter. In her tenth collection, Foreign Bodies, she revisits the personal as political while exploring the immigrant body, the endangered animal's body, objects removed from children's bodies, hoarded things, and charms. Previous books Toxic Flora and Brain Fever were prompted by fields of science; The Narrow Road to the Interior takes title and forms from Basho's famous journals. Honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, PEN/Voelcker Award, Shelley Memorial Prize. Hahn is a distinguished professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York.