Stephanie Anderson
01.27.14
I can always remember good morning because it is a state. As in, we came to a yellow field. As in, dreaming the past.
It doesn’t seem fair, such dreaming when one so wants the new. Practicing in a mutter. What use are these measured clues? Is there room?
I add another diary article to the list. Health is like a gecko. What is in the books with the gold and pink spines?
Each page is my age minus one. The librarians wear aprons. There is a certain symmetry. This table has eight wooden –
I couldn’t understand the question in two languages. The Art of Shaving between Poplore and Oscar Wilde. Wayward Puritans.
Painting the Heaves Wasting Away. In the Age of the Smart Machine, The Regional Imagination, The Phantom Menace.
Figuring Foreigners Out: The Joy of Visualization. The Reception of D. H. Lawrence Around the World. Populism.
Sanskrit engraves the bell, planks of writing in the graveyard. A woman passes with incense and water, each stone a family.
Waseda charms to pass exams: 500 yen, a packet with a W. It’s winter, and flowering, these first few days.
I am starting to get the hang of the count. Crows caw: suitcase left by the side of the road. Did I mention the mottled windows?
At the thundergate, sweet sake, dumplings, and wind without wind. I wish to be a goodwalker. 85 is the best fortune.
It has no fire box. On the outskirts, dusky, the sadness of things. It’s better for you not to be anxious so much. Heat and smoke.
01.30.14
Overcast. We trade mountain for wire and chip. Lines to the train to the field of autumn leaves. This is the theory of love.
Each station plays a variation. The dramatics of electric town, its fuses, its kilowatt smell. Don’t know where to look.
Delicious is hard to remember, and I’m always reaching for a napkin. A basket for jackets. Easy chopsticks for me.
All the baby fish we want, but otherwise we don’t have the right documentation. At five the bells ring. Shouldn’t you clear out?
The pitch of the sirens is more reasonable. Open the windows to watch. The rain has stopped, but we cannot see the fire.
Hoping for happy hour, we find a goosefish. The chain is okay. We’re not sure if it’s endangered, dinner before dinner.
We go south, centered on self. The street is lined with snacks. She puts the glass in a box to catch the excess. It tastes like log cabin.
It used to be a geisha corridor, and she was a knock-out. They’re both from old school Edo. We are the only ones here.
Relieved we didn’t go up in flames, along with the woman washing her hair. In the hotpot, oysters and chrysanthemum leaves.
The yellow is a deeper flavor, she says. They talk about the mob; they talk about my hair. They like to know we’re newlyweds.
Calligraphy is to show. The construction men have light sabers. But for the grey clouds backlit, I felt so inept today.
Overcast. We trade mountain for wire and chip. Lines to the train to the field of autumn leaves. This is the theory of love.
Each station plays a variation. The dramatics of electric town, its fuses, its kilowatt smell. Don’t know where to look.
Delicious is hard to remember, and I’m always reaching for a napkin. A basket for jackets. Easy chopsticks for me.
All the baby fish we want, but otherwise we don’t have the right documentation. At five the bells ring. Shouldn’t you clear out?
The pitch of the sirens is more reasonable. Open the windows to watch. The rain has stopped, but we cannot see the fire.
Hoping for happy hour, we find a goosefish. The chain is okay. We’re not sure if it’s endangered, dinner before dinner.
We go south, centered on self. The street is lined with snacks. She puts the glass in a box to catch the excess. It tastes like log cabin.
It used to be a geisha corridor, and she was a knock-out. They’re both from old school Edo. We are the only ones here.
Relieved we didn’t go up in flames, along with the woman washing her hair. In the hotpot, oysters and chrysanthemum leaves.
The yellow is a deeper flavor, she says. They talk about the mob; they talk about my hair. They like to know we’re newlyweds.
Calligraphy is to show. The construction men have light sabers. But for the grey clouds backlit, I felt so inept today.
02.02.14
I dream statuary and synthesis. Guilty parties outrageous. A flashy soundscape, a space violin case. Hobbling.
Stereoscope slides in the courtyard contain proposals and fishes. We admire the golden oldies, blue Bobbiesan.
The red gates proceed, making a portico. Something is forbidden here. The girls rehearse a play and the tree begins to blossom.
Noodles are an offering. Graffiti Joe has been at work in Golden Town. He calls it grubby and quaint. He brags an island.
A friend mentions the colors not at home. The streetcar fills with children; a girl cradles with yellow yarn. She claps and it’s a palm.
Soaking in the 100 yen store salts, I want him not to be sick of me. Verbs come slow. The pen is smoother though, in mist. My body.
Moisture on the light mint walls. I can hear him eating ice cream. How to unlearn hands, those hives of mastery. To guide by matter.
All Japanese children learn Japanese. At a party once I tried to tell the range of it. But that sounds wonderful, he said.
In the end, it is the same as apprenticeship. I remember irises in the wall. I could bow before most anything.
Still the steam. I don’t know why thinking like this opens gaps. When I’m honest, it’s not just about her death. The callous pad, there.
By leaving it, I didn’t have to make any decisions. I’m still a teacher, I want to say. It’s me in the audience.
On the train, I could read the tune. How the ink holds better when the paper is damp. Blue veins in blue water; this is the low B.
I dream statuary and synthesis. Guilty parties outrageous. A flashy soundscape, a space violin case. Hobbling.
Stereoscope slides in the courtyard contain proposals and fishes. We admire the golden oldies, blue Bobbiesan.
The red gates proceed, making a portico. Something is forbidden here. The girls rehearse a play and the tree begins to blossom.
Noodles are an offering. Graffiti Joe has been at work in Golden Town. He calls it grubby and quaint. He brags an island.
A friend mentions the colors not at home. The streetcar fills with children; a girl cradles with yellow yarn. She claps and it’s a palm.
Soaking in the 100 yen store salts, I want him not to be sick of me. Verbs come slow. The pen is smoother though, in mist. My body.
Moisture on the light mint walls. I can hear him eating ice cream. How to unlearn hands, those hives of mastery. To guide by matter.
All Japanese children learn Japanese. At a party once I tried to tell the range of it. But that sounds wonderful, he said.
In the end, it is the same as apprenticeship. I remember irises in the wall. I could bow before most anything.
Still the steam. I don’t know why thinking like this opens gaps. When I’m honest, it’s not just about her death. The callous pad, there.
By leaving it, I didn’t have to make any decisions. I’m still a teacher, I want to say. It’s me in the audience.
On the train, I could read the tune. How the ink holds better when the paper is damp. Blue veins in blue water; this is the low B.
Stephanie Anderson is the author of In the Key of Those Who Can No Longer Organize Their Environments (Horse Less Press) and Variants on Binding (forthcoming, The National Poetry Review Press). New and forthcoming chapbooks including Charting Practice (Double Cross Press), LIGHTBOX (The New Megaphone), and Sentence, Signal, Stain (Greying Ghost). She edits Projective Industries and currently lives in Tokyo.
