Starting with Eye, Long, And, Down, Wall, and Shelf, and: House, Grandmother, Child, Stove, Almanac, Tears

Abstract

Starting with Eye, Long, And, Down, Wall, and Shelf, and: House, Grandmother, Child, Stove, Almanac, Tears Kimiko Hahn (bio) Starting with Eye, Long, And, Down, Wall, and Shelf Who invented the shelfand did they identify needor eyeball nature—say a low tide—that sparked a longing?I imagine finding myself in a caveand, unconsciously,setting down a cup,placing it on a ledge. When itcomes to imagination,walls are not always evident.For a shelf especially sobecause solutionsare often accidental. Evenincidental. That’s the longand short of sinks, bowls,bedstands, umbrellas,belts, and even hairbands.Take the blanket: whointroduced goose down? Or,who spied a wall to draw a buffalo?Chicken or egg? My parents’first bookshelf of bricks and plankswas sheer utility: Walt and Maude’sgallery of objets, art and otherwise.I wasn’t born yet. Andwhen I was born, Father hastilybuilt proper display cases,so nothing on a lower shelfcould wedge downmy baby throat. Nor could mywalleyed uncle then criticizetheir bohemian decor. Father’d said,“Shelve it, man!” Now,Funny to shelve an opinion, [End Page 71] I think. How long would it stand down?And what if the very wall crumbledunder the weight of self? [End Page 72] House, Grandmother, Child, Stove, Almanac, Tears Borrowing words from Bishop just for fun Long ago, chickens scratched outside Paia housewhile inside Grandma stood over Grandpa’s favorite childplaying by the stove and, contrary to the almanac,hoped against rain—though the luna wouldn’t’ve shed tearsif the sky let loose its own drops of tears. And when the yard filled up with sun outside the plantation house,Grandma hung bachelor-laundry and the child(my mother) toddled from the stove to her brother’s almanac(he was old enough to cut cane and the almanacgave him a heads-up on the weather) to tear out pagesand carry them out the house to her mother (my grandmother)who couldn’t read the alphabet to her child. Inside, in the large dented pot on the stove, she boiledone of her chickens. On the stove in a smaller potsteamed—if the almanac had said to plant—daikon she’d torn from the patch beyond the outhouseand laundry lines. Grandma’s seven children—the youngest would be an uncle and was the childshe was carrying—all knew the black stove with four burnerslike the almanac ad. There, decades later, Grandpa shed tears while playing hanafuda becauseI asked, Jii-chan, why’re your teeth in a cup? Grandmawas nowhere in my memory. Grandma may have beenaround since I was the child of Grandpa’s favorite—or at her stove. Was the War foretold by the almanac?When Go-for-Broke Uncle returned, were marvelous tears shed?No bakemono wandered her house! Still, [End Page 73] a house empties. Grandma set a Grandpa shrinenext to the stove and a granddaughter visits just to readthe tattered Almanac to those ancient ears. [End Page 74] Kimiko Hahn kimiko hahn casts a wide net for subject matter. In her new collection Foreign Bodies, she revisits the personal as political while exploring the immigrant body, the endangered animal’s body, objects removed from children’s bodies, hoarded things, and on. She teaches at Queens College, City University of New York. Copyright © 2022 Kimiko Hahn