Sophia Terazawa

Paris by Night [“Who ghost-locks me?”]

 

 

Who ghost-locks me?

 

You scatter to sea, my grain, simply hearing of charity, encompassing the dreams, ambling or stated simply harvesting, or given, hopefully to shore. Scarlet history ties history trigger, ever-wincing camouflage half-open, burnt through canopy, to whistle for you whistle.

Paris by Night [“Through burnt canopies, a footnote whistles overhead”]

 

 

after Nhã Thuyên

 

 

Through burnt canopies, a footnote whistles overhead, perhaps the trees, grunting, the sapling near my thigh, kneecaps casting sweet magnolia to din, sweetened jade, perhaps a trickle, shadowing the earth, earthly like the chest, at night, separating you from palm from lip, pulls up warmth or tonguing it, pronounce it yet the possibilities for grief, coloring my body in as much, bodies coloring divide, my bodily collapse, backing jungles, where, collapsing after sap, quickens in my human, thick of jungle forcing braids, jungles braid desire to my reclamation, fire, forging echoes in my mouth, lunging after bombs, sapling, thatched roof, amber, hardened eyes, glimmering eyes, forgiving eyes, collecting, infinitely harder, brighter than the amber, giving alms forgiving, kissing me, I ask the gravestones, why forgive our dead, holding a mangrove, wish for alms, whispering our resolve into my being, then you glisten, glistening, my voices multiply beneath duress, you wrap me, wrapping me in burning leaves, the way a country’s flesh grows back, the seeping after warding off your color, lifting me, the monsoon, laying me among your ashen temples, gazing, quietly, your afternoon upon my face, I wash the rice for lunch, my face, the other coloring divide, the coloring of braids, desiring some reclamation, longing after bombs, long despite that echo, bombing, sapling, thatched roof, amber, hardened eyes, glimmering eyes, forgiving eyes, collecting, infinitely harder, brighter than the amber, giving alms forgiving, thick of jungle forcing braids to separate, right then you walk into my home then kiss me, why forgive the dead, my gravestones ask, gashing, entering, your interest holds resolve against my being noted yellow for its copper, browning stones, whirring, stirring afternoons to gazes tender, like you, tenderly believing, love, the grief for what it gives to justice, vivid cities, vivid music, fracturing my spirit, fracturing the music, recognizing under your illuminating gaps, the gapping to peace, inheritance by pieces, waning off my lighted gaps, illuminating gaps, admitting, learning not to love a grief for what it gives to justice, commonly avoided, practiced in the margins, safely in the margins, committed to its margins, braiding my desire to some reclamation, long, in spite of longing echoes, longing after bombs, sapling, thatched roof, amber, hardened eyes, glimmering eyes, forgiving eyes, collecting, infinitely harder, brighter than the amber, giving alms forgiving, thick of jungles forcing me to separate, right then you walk into my home then kiss me, why forgive the dead, my gravestones ask, shimmering, then brighter, frozen like the sapling to the jute thus frozen, sunlight thus collides, your shoulders bending, hours shouldering embrace, freezing out the war or veiling with your light, colossal veils snaking up trees, the snakes become those trees, over day, night, two hundred fingers break the ground, you love a grief for what it gives, uprooted, day by day, decanters hours shouldering embrace, shouldering these bounds to optic nerve to run, to jolt, to waken up the dead, dusking, the making of your light constitutionally inked, cups upon your making or accounting for the love far beyond a grief, what it gives to ink, the shouldering of weight upon your shoulders, crossing out this love, knotted up your love, crossing out the ink of knotted up, by tones, the melanin to brown, shutting up the housing, hovering the spill of hours shouldering embrace, you pause, breathing, safer, home as sound returns to sunrise, holding, ambling my days to state lines given all the rays, cleansing jungles, tapping jungles, felling out the jungle, that forgiving jungle, buried in my jungles, lost inside your jungle, tangled with my jungles, tangled with the loving grief for what it gives, for what it shores up with divide upon arrival, older feats of weary, hopelessly, you’re pulling out the navigational account of poetry, the fragments loving grief for what it gives to justice, practiced in the margins, safely, there, committed to your margins, may you be, instead, contracted, yes, asylum is a place we never cross into each other, gapped, loving the grief for what it gives to justice negates my widening divide, loving a grief for what it gives to justice, receding from faces possibilities of color, memories that ache with confidential tones, hence you destroy, deforest after color, tearing up to shades, loving grief for what it gives to color, here, atop another color spackling my tears, you love the grief for what it gives to trapezoids or squares, for are you in my skyline, in my freedom, are you in your freedom or my freedom, spirited to music, cities fractured, spirited to fractures, cities, music, there, you pull out first the navigational account of poetry, the leaving count, you turn my heart in rhythms bursting into walls, slowing the light down, here, dissolving, loving grief for what it gives to justice, bursting where you stop, you stop the jungle after rain, loving the grief for what it gives to justice, winding, nowhere leaves the hour, hourly of broken, cups, collecting all the flood, immense as flooding cities gutted into floods, matrimony, you are ambling divide, dividing up my path, maybe, wherefore, the fated makes it stop, naming your time unstoppable, you slash at all the overgrowth, that loves a grief for what it gives, desires reclamation, long after the echo, longing after bombs, sapling, thatched roof, amber, hardened eyes, glimmering eyes, forgiving eyes, collecting, infinitely harder, brighter than the amber, giving alms forgiving, thicker with the jungle, thick, like loving grief for what it gives, to force a braid to separate, right then you walk into my home then kiss me, why forgive the dead, my gravestones ask, shimmering much brighter, frozen, sapling with their jute, frozen like the sunlight, here, colliding with your shoulders bending under hour, all embracing, shouldering my stones with your wall, where you break it, shouldering the stones but stones are never really stones, moving roundly, ghostly, you are diplomatically most plural, leaving, millions to hunger boats, shattering to sea, home as sound returning to sunrise, fading like witness stops surrendering to jungle, exiting inheritance for what you know exists, twisting most carefully, destroys, takes over, has no way of stopping, moves as though to stop my home as silence after sunrise, there, you love me, grief for what it gives, the hummingbirds must fall from skies, you listen now to multiply, you listen up to multiply, holding up to multiply, you multiply, the laying down to multiply, the lifting me to multiply, the whispering divide, kissing, multiplying shoulders in the knots of forests gazing through my cups, out here, believing me, racing up our trees, chests at night dividing palm from lip, what pulls out warmly, shouldering embrace, bending fractures, might illuminate the gapping, counting up your layers, navigationally poetry, you love a grief for what it gives to banishment, speaking the wind, most gloriously emerald, hesitating, marginal, birthing the month, at last, diluted colors, touching near the margins, birthing up a month, diluted by its colors, humming, leaving, eyes jolt to the run, home as sound returns to sunrise, you must marry, move out of the stones, loving grief for what it gives to justice, my beloved, is this meeting required?

Paris by Night [“How might you be attentive to my living?”]

 

 

Q: How might you be attentive to my living?

 

A:

blue transforms

mourning

 

cesspool into

light

 

holes     feverishly

render

 

một tờ giấy

sheets of earth

 

thrum-thrum

diamond     tongue

 

một ly nước

spells tipping over

 

 

[deep vibrato]

Paris by Night [“Mesh is pink, taffeta bedazzled”]

 

 

Mesh is pink, taffeta bedazzled with their ruby onstage. Plastic shoes are colored; neon covers stage. Sequined divas walk through thunder. Massively, their chrome steel is laced with beads, molten near the light. Platforms sink on tape, into each covered holes, leaving quiet signs for audience to ponder then abide by quietly, applause. Therefore, divas rise; all their arms waving like trees.

 

 

[FOG MACHINE]

Paris by Night [“Can you describe the sound?”]

 

 

Q: Can you describe the sound?

 

A:

 

sấm sét     dreams

gathering up

 

domes

 

đi hát          mưa

clinging to a pause

 

Thanh Lam

 

plucks     every string

gourd hollows out

 

 

[SOUND OF CLAPPING]

biography

SOPHIA TERAZAWA is a poet of Vietnamese-Japanese descent. She is the author of two chapbooks: Correspondent Medley (Factory Hollow Press) and I AM NOT A WAR (Essay Press). Her work appears in The Offing, Puerto del Sol, Poor Claudia, and elsewhere. She is a recent graduate with an MFA in Poetry at the University of Arizona. Her favorite color is purple.