From] The Hour of the Rat (We arrive), [from] The Hour of the Rat (a rainbow), [from] The Hour of the Rat (The persimmon)

Abstract

[from] The Hour of the Rat (We arrive), [from] The Hour of the Rat (a rainbow), [from] The Hour of the Rat (The persimmon) Brandon Shimoda (bio) from The Hour of the Rat We arrive on the islandwalk into the nearest rockresound with inkv Holes in the earth, isall the crying caveslike lions islandsmasksconcealing the rapid evolutionof a newborn facecycling through the var. temptationsof how to settleand fit and not relapsethe bad habits of ancestorsdying by being misremembered The water ate our kneesThe fish were hanging on [End Page 91] from The Hour of the Rat a rainbow races across a field people are gathered above They know each other’s faces not each other, the familiarity they feel is a suture I know the people’s shadows, not their facestheir faces dis , orflatten as if a chemicalpassing. This is the advantage of passing:centering a new existencethat sharpenswhere the field ends. [End Page 92] from The Hour of the Rat The persimmon is a grandmotherin the body of a childancient, ageless, made of sunand sea, the parting of the continentsto rest a single cell of lifenot yet manifested, Deference is to hang a portrait of the persimmonhigh on the wall, angled slightly downso it can watchthe comings and goings + We pass each hour in grassand watch the laureled skeletons walk past, why isn’t every dayof the dead [End Page 93] Brandon Shimoda Brandon Shimoda’s recent books are The Grave on the Wall (City Lights, 2019), which received the PEN Open Book Award, and The Desert (The Song Cave, 2018). He is currently—maybe always— writing a book on the afterlife of Japanese American incarceration, passages from which have appeared in The Asian American Literary Review, Lit Hub, The Nation, and The New Inquiry. He lives in the desert. Copyright © 2021 Pleiades Press