Hijikata Tatsumi san—
crazed
electric wire hair the rice caking
off your animal body tense with revolt
and time. It expands
in the long grasses
of your sickle limbs.
You monstrous & powdered
transecting my father’s mirrored rice
paddies
with the criminality
of your
lust.
While you become
kamaitachi stretched demon weasel
extending the sense of rain
my father
practices chromatic
scales & worships Bach in between
picking nits out of rice
and carrying
nightsoil to the fields.
Your pale-sooted lynx steps
rut the tatami
with a dance
finally
for the Japanese body.