adumbrations / listen for
predictions / augured jawbones
snugged to tunnel walls
when cats spill from windows
slip through opened doors
some welder’s torch sizzle
fizzing the tips of their whiskers
when insect swarms clot the shore
in a frantic tangled macramé
and hippopotamuses bellow
a chorus of mournful cellos
when snakes awaken
from hibernation / curlicuing
up from their dens
like bolts come unscrewed—
their frozen bodies
a semiology of hieroglyphs
in the snow:
実行してください離れて速く
津波が来ています。
非常に大規模な 1 つがここに向かっています。
危険にさらされています。
when double helixes spun by skeins
of flying sparrows unravel
when centipedes appear
in rippling synchronicities
when colonies of toads erupt
like burst popcorn
from ponds’ silver foil
when fish come unschooled
when bees abandon their queens
flee their honey
when silky clusters of bats lift
in smoky volcanic furies as if
rising / from a city ravished / in flame
radioactive man
the papers started calling me
Radioactive Man after tests from
the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
revealed the highest radiation levels
in anyone they’d ever screened
I guess I’m the champion, I joke
to reporters who come for interviews
like visitors from another planet
bulky and brightly awkward
in white hazmat suits, they look
like mourners at a Buddhist funeral
and so I light a cigarette to dangle
from the corner of my lip and grin
even eight miles away, in Tomioka,
the sound of Reactor 4 exploding
was completely unmistakable,
so I took my elderly parents south
to my aunt in Iwaki, who refused
to even open her door to us because
she said we were contaminated
then we tried a temporary shelter
but it was full, so we came home
again to the no go zone, and when
other relatives agreed to take in
my parents, I stayed behind
to care for the abandoned animals
I’ve seen many terrible things:
cages filled with withered songbirds,
horses left to starve in their stalls,
an abandoned puppy that grew
too big for the chain around its neck
I rescue as many as I can:
the dog trapped inside a barn
for months, who survived by eating
the dead flesh of starved cattle
or the feral ostrich so vicious
the police who border patrol
the nuclear exclusion zone
armed with Geiger counters
nicknamed her The Boss
all over Tomioka, the animals
recognize the sound of my truck,
and come running to meet me
when I make my daily rounds
many come to stay with me
at my family’s old rice farm
living without water
or electricity in the ruins
of the town where I was born
is sometimes very lonely
I wait for cancer or leukemia
and joke to The Boss about
becoming a superhero through
a radioactive ostrich bite
sometimes I think of visiting
my two kids, who live
with my ex-wife in Tokyo,
but then I remind myself
of the invisible dust coated
in cesium particles that’s in
my clothes, my hair, my skin
I remember I can see my future
in the sick animals I care for
in the American Watchmen comics,
Dr. Manhattan was once tricked
into believing he’d given everyone
he ever loved cancer, through
exposure to his radioactive body
just the thought of this undid him,
made him feel so solitary and blue
he left the earth behind for eons,
to brood in exile on the moon
hungry tsunami / tsunami as galactus
the hunger of trying to hold back
the hunger a little bit longer
the hunger of restraint and pullback
churn and growl of beached fishes
in an agitated bouillabaisse
liquid silver squirming on an empty shore
to lick the gilding from the buildings
like golden drizzles of caramel
to take the cake / flick off the crumbs
to raze the fruit / spit out the pits
the hunger of sucked-out marrow
the unwillingly pried-open oyster