old man yamamoto // may 3rd 1942

old man yamamoto was deafer than forests like someone had spun clouds in his ear drums wrinkles spanning deeper than canyons sometimes we wondered if dust storms quieted their journey of fury in the space between his skin old man yamamoto was young once turned his back to a rising sun crossed the pacific in a tinder box his first steps in our country of fill in the blanks were uncertain steps, just born colt steps take me home steps proud owner of aspiring nickel grocery story shelves lined with rice with hot dog buns mr. with a mrs. in tow, cherry oak piano in the front room playing tinkly learning to love you quietly minuets American sons spoke in tongues sounded like horses galloping across the broad shoulders of desert home run hedonist planted cherry tree polaroids in his front yard but one morning he woke up and he was old the shades of his eyes were drawn stubborn, crusting over the sun rise he creaked his way to the front door where his wife and sons bundled with belongings if you chopped him horizontal he would be nothing but rings wrapped around an unraveling trunk it was May 3rd 1942 he grew old between barracks of dear old camp tooly lake he grew old checking boxes he could only make out a the intersection of four life lines filling out loyalty questionnaires that felt vaguely like treading through mine fields he grew old forced trade of sons for inheritance-less war fighting fanfare of paper machie guillotines and cattle prods and he was old spotting blurry poppies as red reminders of a flag he once forsook but he was old so how could he have remembered? so old they kept shouting step away from the fence old man step away from the fence old man step away from the fence old man you deaf man you hopeless man you old man you dead man you. after the fact we wondered if he was playing with fire gambling a handful of wild flowers with the gun man that click nesting itself between his temporal lobe and aorta in Japanese the word for forget is to cut from your heart this country keeps trying to cut us from its heart cancer of history but these korematsu scalpels are useless because we refuse to be incised people of the sun we hold memories like lockets burning reminders of souls ferried in paper lanterns and the new ones that will follow and so we remember: once there was an old man told love stories of this extraordinary experience named America kneeling to pick her a poppy he bent too close to the fringe of her skirt and was burned burned bad but never ever cut.