Two Poems by Sidney Taiko

 

 

Ariel, To the Court:

 

My father is no king

just a fish with a staff –

eyes on his many daughters

no one ever asked me

what it meant

to be his favorite –

Close or close, which is it?

I grew legs, walked out of water

lost my voice and a cough of salt

It’s a crime – the way a father

leaves his daughter with all

these holes and another man

then tries to fill them

 

Hapa

 

You’re not a feminist

if you shave your legs

every day

my roommate said.

 

But it makes me feel

closer to my mother –

I didn’t inherit

the bald body gene.

 

That’s my father’s fault.

 

I’m not afraid to talk about race,

roommate said.

 

So I told her my colleague

wrote a story for workshop –

compared divorce to Hiroshima

 

and am I permitted

to be wounded?

 

No –

even you must know, the Japanese

are the Americans of the East.

 

How evil, how calm

those words bend

with her mallet tone.

 

Later, she did laundry

with rage and purpose:

we pay $4 per load that’s fucking criminal

how is that allowed to happen will/you/protest/with/me?

 

I wish she was afraid

to be stupid and sincere –

I closed my eyes, thought

my people know swords.

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Sidney Taiko is the Chief Editrix of Storm Cellar Literary Journal. She works for and attends the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has a crooked spine and a potty mouth, but so far things are working out okay.