TWO POEMS by Sophia Terazawa

Residual

                         These syllables strike our lower

             register [branching: fog]. Who whispers

             like a friend, “Bêche-de-mer,”

I wring out towels and pillow cases.

                         Sunday afternoon. Check on

                  your sister, you sign. She won’t speak

  anymore. Glass trees.

  Soapstone box. You package her father’s

       old shirt there in Queens

[arms crossed at the chest] posing

           unpalatably. I imitate you

     imitating him like a tourist on the tenth

                                     night of spring in a country bent

                        to numb what could hurt but doesn’t.

San Simeon

Dionysus, get up. Your friend is here. Smoke
on the portico, leafless, head to toe in gold.

Angus cattle roam past tomorrow, 

startle into place; this home, measured by this
low thrumming. Get up. Wash your face.

Honeycomb patterns a handkerchief 

rave, though he’s not my guest.
I won’t let him in. Hurry, mind the blue

marble. Sweet smoked hickory is a sarcophagus

between rooms cracking. This year
love will find me ready for it

helping ma with taxes. 24 adorned faces

will make a sentence, the old kind. 
Suppose I wait longer than I should. Eve,

Oshōgatsu: oh, interminable want.