tsunami in love: kintsukuroi / golden joinery
origami of tsunami: a technical manual and glossary
When man falls into conflict with nature, monsters are born.
—The Return of Godzilla (1985)
TSUNAMI vs. the FUKUSHIMA 50
ontology of tsunami
awoken venom
cobra come uncharmed
glittering rush
of fanged lightning
that strikes
and strikes again
tsunami has no name
call her the scalded splash
of tea jarred from
a broken cup’s cracked glaze
call her the blood-soaked shirt
and cutaway pants
pooled ruby on the floor / rising biohazard
ill-omened oil that stills
the wings of birds
she spills
and spills
and spills over
a sloshed bucket
tipped-over pitcher
the bent tin cup’s
cool sluice of rinse
poured over skin’s
delicious prickle
ginger’s cleansing sting
erasing the soft flesh of fish
from the tongue
she goes by no name
call her annihilatrix
call her tabula rasa
she’s the magic slate’s
crackling cellophane page
shellacked wings un-clung
from staticky black elytra
the liminal torn-open, turning
words into invisible birds lifting
unruly as catastrophe
yes, but / and …
(if only, if only—
meticulous swift precision
of disaster’s Swiss watch)
she remains unnamed
call her the meme
infecting your screen
call her the malware
gone viral
dreaming tsunami
maybe she was sleeping:
a dream of fishes helixed
in spiraling schools
anemone’s veronicas
ouroboros of sea snakes
the chambered nautilus’s
slow-whorled tornadoes
(hypnosis of dust motes)
girl in the grass face down
soiled focus, brain’s green blur
lens wheezing in and out
of tiny myopias: ant, gnat,
midge, aphid, no-see-um
Nanking cherry petals’
sickened swirl / snapdragons’
red mouths pinched open
to the waking dream
from which she can’t awaken
(hypnosis of dust motes)
mosquito stuck in her ear
too scared to tell / can’t hear
above the buzzing
ambered seal of earwax
fevering one side of her face
she drowns at night
in deep cold sweat / dreams
she’s a sea monster
(hypnosis of dust motes / dead calm)
where are the fault lines
she hides along the floorboards?
what happens when she wakens
from this clam before the thorn?
tsunami goes to canada
she liked the clouds
which coasted down close
spoke to her sotto voce
in the glamorous
language of nebulizers
go away they seemed
to breathe (though not unkindly)
before sucking her deeper in
she stared smitten
at the mountains / stricken
afflicted by them
besotted in the lunch room
with an unquenchable crush
though maybe she worried too much
about bears / about pepper spray
the falls gave her strange ideas
about froth
and glitter
and churn
and spume
and spill
maybe someday she would pull back
and let it all go to fall like that
a silvery levering of pachinko balls
a cat vomiting from a great height
perched swirl of vertigo lurching
on the mountainside switchback
no taking back the swoon
animal portents foretell the rise of tsunami
when elephants kneel
pressing their trunks
down to the ground
like