What the Japanese Perhaps Heard -- Rachel Rose

(Poem #133)What the Japanese Perhaps Heard Perhaps they heard we don't understand them very well. Perhaps this made them Pleased. Perhaps they heard we shoot Japanese students who ring the wrong Bell at Hallowe'en. That we shoot at the slightest provocation: a low mark On an exam, a lovers' spat, an excess of guilt. Perhaps they wondered If it was guilt we felt at the sight of that student bleeding out among our lawn flamingos, Or something recognizable to them, something like grief. Perhaps They heard that our culture has its roots in desperate immigration And lone men. Perhaps they observed our skill at raising serial killers, That we value good teeth above good minds and have no festivals To remember the dead. Perhaps they heard that our grey lakes are deep enough to swallow cities, That our landscape is vast wheat and loneliness. Perhaps they ask themselves if, when grief Wraps its wet arms around Montana, we would not prefer the community of archipelagos Upon which persimmons are harvested and black fingers of rock uncurl their digits In the mist. Perhaps their abacus echoes the shape that grief takes, One island bleeding into the next, And for us grief is an endless cornfield, silken and ripe with poison. -- Rachel Rose