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Washing the Saucepans— 
The Moon Glows on Her Hands
in the Shallow River
                                       —Kobayashi Issa

It’s yet another night when he sits in the yard, wishing the fence 
to mend itself, wanting the wily fox to make off 

with the chickens. He remembers when they painted the walls 
yellow, a box of summer— 

when having a house meant something 
before talk left the kitchen

and the garden grew thick with vegetables
while the flowerbeds languished. 

But the moon loves his dishwasher now more than ever, 
her silhouette centered in a square of light.

Her loose hairs curl from the sink steam, lit like fiber optics 
around her face: Who needs electricity on a night like this— 

when the grass wets his bare feet 
and the late-night smokes have lost their thrill. 

He swears the stars are smirking. After all, 
the moon is making love to his wife, holding her hands still.





Riding the Ranch Roads 


seems to 
have something 
to do with the difference 
between lonely and lonesome: 
lone, the smoke drags in, some, the smoke 
pours out—two syllables of breathing, tobacco 
laden, where the herd dogs sleep with all four paws touching, 
where the sun dips down behind a house fixed for dancing, where I hide 
my rifle in long grasses, moon-stunned, when dark calls 
the rabid from their burrows, where girls hide love 
in the folds of their petticoats, where a dinner 
bell sends its clang across dusty distances 
like a bullet to my windblown 
soul or at least it
seems to




Cricket
Chirping
In a Scarecrow’s Belly 
                                                    —Kobayashi Issa

Charlie Perrsen’s feed store sign hangs a notch crooked 
as fall does a belly crawl into Plainsville. Here’s the clincher: 

He’d blow his wad on a plane ticket south but the foal’s legs 
are spindly. He’d make a set of wings with chicken wire 

and crow feathers, but he lacks the tack to work with. Wind 
catches the hole of his beer bottle, sings a song of reckoning. 

Here’s the dickering: He’d empty his pockets for a train ticket 
north, but the foal’s a pretty filly, his Dusty Rose. And the work 

is never done. He re-stuffs the scarecrow when the horizon 
halves the sun, after September’s heat combs the corn silk. 

He chirps back to the crickets, rubbing his legs together 
under faded sheets and a sickle moon. A sick ol’ moon.