Follow wherever], and: [The women first], and: Boredom: a broken sestina, and: The Toxicologist at Home

Abstract

[Follow wherever], and: [The women first], and: Boredom: a broken sestina, and: The Toxicologist at Home Kimiko Hahn (bio) [Follow wherever] a golden shovel following Richard Wright In bedtime stories, a girl or girls must followinstructions (or the wind) whereverthe concrete, the invisible, or thevoice (like that of a tree)leads her. She walks a path until it branches,then halts, fancies she'll makea choice because choice isn't foretold. She archesher back, then eyebrows. She finds herself ina clearing where animals badger. Thepossum says, Light can be torrid.The moonlight more than the sun. [The women first] a golden shovel following Issa She feared the undertow and thesharks there where womenfrom her family collected seaweed, firstpulling up skirts, then taking a turnat the best swaths of shore. A hazyrecollection, Mother said overcoffee. In Grandma's kitchen also, theshadows smelled of tidalcurrents. I even feared the flats. [Hiroaki Sato, translator] [End Page 76] Boredom: a broken sestina inspired by Adam Phillips A bored adult is stuck in a corral—rain-beaten mud, even the air, close. Buta bored child finds herself between desires:at eight, all I wanted was a necklace of coral,Mother's, worn close to her heart, my heart.I never grew bored of those tiny twigs of red,sired on reefs. I knew origin from watchingmermaids on tv in animated depths,a perky realm only threatened,come to find out, by proximity to sailorsaboard boats with capital desiresat the expense of sea stars. It's as plain as coralthreatened by dredging, quarrying,boat anchors, and touching. And of courseplastic. Inside a Honolulu submarine,we tourists zipped around the harborto aim cell-phone cameras. No one touched coraland no one was bored. Maybe we werecorralled between desires:Mother wearing coral,Father building a wall out of boredom. The Toxicologist at Home I lurch from thing to literal thing—I have little curiosity or patienceto accost what cannot be seen.Not incensed but senseless [End Page 77] I have little curiosity or patienceunlike the crown-of-thorns sea star.Not not incensed or senseless.More, prickly. Or barbed. Unlike the crown-of-thorns sea starI do not possess deadly spikes.I'm just prickly. Or barbed.At times, metaphysically toxic. Alas, I do not possess deadly spikes.I do not turn myself inside out.At times, metaphysically toxicI long to be a crown-of-thorns sea star. I lurch from thing to literal thingso I don't turn myself inside out.To just accost what can be seenI belong to a crown-of-thorns sea star. [End Page 78] Kimiko Hahn Kimiko Hahn's most recent collection is Foreign Bodies. She teaches in the mfa Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York. Copyright © 2022 University of Nebraska Press