Pineapple Fritters
BY BRANDON SHIMODA.
1
Before the American men
shot the atomic bomb
at the people of Hiroshima
they enjoyed several plates
of pineapple fritters
or
it could be assumed
they enjoyed
easing the tension
into the camaraderie that makes shooting
an atomic bomb
for American men
pineappled straight
to the ends of their lives, almost
incidental
I loved the damn things, said the navigator
at the end of his life
He remembered nothing
He became a plate
2
Pineapple fritters carried the murderers
into the sky
The sun pushed
The people looked up
The bomb stopped short
Digesting The taste
twirling to the streets
and fire breaks Skin
iridescent, not effusive
not asking for peace
or explanation
or the bamboo spear to be sharper
or the fire breaks to be thicker
to grow back into the body
or return to the breezes
3
The moment the sun touches the wall
the sea feels it
not moving
until it
is clear
Citizenship
BY BRANDON SHIMODA.
I teach people to slow down and breathe
so they can speed up and be angry
cut their anger precisely
on the edge of their vast citizenship
warp it watch
the weapons arc over
the vacuum of sky at low tide
shadows plastering false melancholy
onto vapors that rush into
the minds of the people
I teach
as they go back home
and find it there
unmoved untouched
every door in place
every window framing a bush
no one hiding no one pinned
by the insectivorous gnawing of a drone
everything visible, accessible
and about to turn ripe
on the tree that has not been ripped out
every juice with ice
every lamp plugged in
water running clear in the bathtub
If you had your life to live over
BY BRANDON SHIMODA.
If you had your life to live over
if it was yours, your life
and it rained down on you
and you absorbed it
and you could see your reflection
in its disintegration
If you had your life to live over
not borrowed or shared
not traced from a presence
that is too shy to greet you
the fault you slip down to
retrieve what slips out of your hand
If you had your life to live over
if having your life to live over
meant being reincarnated
as yourself shifted slightly
to fit a testament to enduring
the sky falling endlessly
If you had your life to live over
if you recognized it on the wall
throwing shadows, woolly and wet
staining the wall with a vision
of an island prison
bodies turning up on the rocks
If you had your life to live over
and could remember the future
as an anecdote melting off the edge of a table
broken, carved into
the names of the people
who passed like bacterium through you
If you had your life to live over,
like fish over coals? egg over rice?
a shadow that rises over the body that casts it?
the mouth of a baby in a house with no people
but gusts of hot symptoms
blowing in from the neighbors?
Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books of poetry and prose, most recently Hydra Medusa (Nightboat Books, 2023) and The Afterlife Is Letting Go (City Lights, 2024). The poems in this issue are from a manuscript in progress titled Rest House, named after the rest house (tourist info center and rest area) in the Peace Park in Hiroshima. You can find him on Instagram @brandon_shimoda, and on X (Twitter) @brandonshimoda.