Ryo Yamaguchi

After You Buried the Danger

So this blinking between us, our small device, our plenary court
blinking remain, like we were so soft, the realgar limn of the aftermath.

I stand and try to form an opinion about something for which I have none—
saturation a problem, strong spring winds across the streets

and through the intermittent parks. Perhaps our dear completion
is simply unallowed. You don’t know what to do;

you are a dent of your father; you have your hand on your chest
as a remark. I am speaking. The ceiling hangs over us.

Time is exhausting like this, slow as the light through the daffodils
you bought for the table, and every leap we take leaves our rhythms behind us

to nurse those old circumstances, we pricking on, which is our way of pounding
ourselves into the earth. So we go and lie down on the floor, and your hair

spreads across the boards like a current, the color of apples in foundry light.
You say, all of myself is trouble, you say, I cannot take anything with me,

and I lie there with you, and outside people are coming home, lifting their windows,
splashing around in their pools.

Ryo Yamaguchi holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, American Letters & Commentary, and Barrow Street. He lives and works in Chicago. Please visit him at plotsandoaths.com.