Brandon Shane

I saw bombs erase blocks on the television,
thought how my ancestors had been obliterated in
Hiroshima, became poltergeists, the survivors
skin walkers howling in melting human suits and
if you saw the American news; documentaries
alongside triumphant parades, while a city
became less than rubble, but primordial ooze,
and the clouds ceased to be clouds, 
but acid for the rain maker, and 
the sky a firmament for hallucinated demons. 

I kept to myself in Yokosuka, 
the place I was born, my Japanese a little too
English, and my English a little too Japanese,
and thought of myself as neckless;
decapitated, never standing a chance,
searching to be filled by something I wasn’t
fully. 

I realized there wasn’t much for me anywhere,
and that this is a common feeling for poets;
staring at the sky, down to the cherry trees,
rinsing my eyes with flowers; all the flowers,
remembering as a child I used to say my name
was John Pedento, and that I died 
during the invasion of Okinawa. 

It all became a laugh, smoke, and ash,
how sometimes you must detach; 
spit on in the outskirts of Tokyo, 
returning to who I am; nothing and no-one. 

How tragic this is, all of this, I think. 
I stared out the window of a dream, 
eyes lined with a little mascara; 
there is no haven anywhere,  
and the pilots are drunk, 
and the island has disappeared, 
and we are all surrounded  
by water. 

Brandon Shane is a poet, born in Yokosuka Japan. You can see his work in the Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Sophon Lit, Marbled Sigh, RIC Journal, Heimat Review, Ink in Thirds, among many others. He would later graduate from Cal State Long Beach. Find him on Twitter @Ruishanewrites