"Day Trip."
"'It looks like the States,' someone murmurs.
And we stare at the wideness of the road,
the space spent on boulevards where
Tokyo has multiple stories of everything, lights
and stairwells and alleys that twist against themselves
like human intestines.
Hiroshima is drivable.
It has space for the sun to expand.
We've been told to try the okonomiyaki
here, a word that means whatever you like, grilled.
The Peace Park is the greenest space
in this plant-loving city.
They've hung chains of origami on a rod
so that the chains and chains of paper cranes
look like jackets and party colors.
Clothes for a manic phase.
Think your hometown pride parade.
Think Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Think of something else.
Try to sing for the cranes, dona nobis.
And here we begin to see the false beauty of harmony
give us, give us as obscene will bring us passion.
In the museum a lunch box, it's open and black.
Inside, the sign says, it held some rice.
I'm pretty sure there's some fish as well.
I remember the color, the mass, the blacks.
I can't see the child without the mess that's
left of her window, the crumbling fuzz of ash,
the shadows of stains.
We opened locks.
Okonomiyaki turns out to be a savory pancake.
Mine has egg and squid and a breath of something
terribly familiar."