From “Pink Waves”
5
it was a wave, it was infectious
an occasional moment reveals nothing but a passing light
extent to which i breathe your facts
it’s haptic; it’s your membrane; it’s material clatter
sliding between your stargazing hoax and flesh
and then somebody steals your wild you
and names it
after a sharp thought
a quiet neck is often indifferent to the mismeasured noise of the world
substrata lower than the territory concedes
sharp pointed arrows indicate the lack of an end
simulated spacial deadline
a hip, stigmata, shake
she was a threnody hit; she happened; she pitched
i did love it
geometry of pleasure
Copyright © 2022 by Sawako Nakayasu. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 14, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This is an excerpt from a book-length poem, Pink Waves. I wrote it on stage in a durational performance, where it became a mode with which I might reckon with various elements of complicated grief. Each numbered section accrues and develops lines from the previous one; this one is the fifth section in the third and final part of the book. Even when extracted from its larger context, the lines still reflect the themes of the whole: attenuated touch; the finite and slippery edges of time; a reaching towards sensory pleasure, peace, unboundedness—speaking through the residue of that which is lost.”
—Sawako Nakayasu
Sawako Nakayasu
Sawako Nakayasu is the author of several poetry collections, most recently The Ants (Les Figues Press, 2014), Texture Notes (Letter Machine, 2010), and Hurry Home Honey (Burning Deck, 2009).