LatinosUSA

Ashes
 
To sweeten the dish, add salt. To bear the pain,
render the insoluble. She envied
 
the past its incursions, yet the past yields to all,
avoidance to acceptance, trees to smoke.
 
My mother brought to this country a token of her death to come.
 
Now it sits on my shelf bearing implements of music.
In her last days I played Sakura on the mandolin,
 
trusting that she might find comfort
in the blossoms fluttering through the failing notes,
 
a return to mornings
of tea and rice,
of warmth and paper walls and deep laughter.
 
Today the rain spells forgive
 
and every idea becomes form, every shadow a symptom,
each gesture a word,
a naming in silence.
 
Scatter me in air I’ve never breathed.
 
* * *
 
My Mother's Ghost Looks Away When I Say Her Father's Name
 
Your body's garden sprouts angry blue fingers
when I mention Magosuke, whose spirit I've not met.
When I mouth his name reluctance oozes out
 
and your saplings shiver in the moist air. I know only
that he drank to excess and threatened to murder my father,
yet somehow I think he would endorse my inabilities.
 
If we should meet, I'll ask. Is the language
in each afterlife the same or does it fragment and
scatter with every fallen petal? You taught me
 
to speak without words, to believe in the undercurrent.
Do you breathe in this existence, or absorb?
Do your roots stretch across ocean floors, from heaven
 
to Texas, from light to anthracite? Is this iris
love or a symptom of decay? I accept with silence my
inheritance of silence, and remember shaping
 
mounds with you and planting dark seeds. So many seeds.

Copyright © 2025 Robert Okaji 


These poems are from Robert’s book Our Loveliest Bruises (A Taos Press, 2025).

Order Link for Our Loveliest Bruises

Robert Okaji

Author Biography

Robert Okaji has late stage metastatic lung cancer, which he finds terribly annoying. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife—poet Stephanie L. Harper— stepson, cat and dog. His first full-length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises, was published by 3: A Taos Press in January 2025. His poetry may be found in Only Poems, Vox Populi and other venues.