SIX PERSIMMONS
for Noko

after ruining another season’s harvest –
over-dried in the kitchen oven then
rehydrated in her home sauna
Aunt Yuki calls upon her sister,

paper sacks stuffed full of orange
fruit, twig and stalk still on
knows that my mother sprouts seedlings
from cast off avocado stones, revives

dead succulents, coaxes blooms out of orchids
a woman who has never spent a moment
of her being on the world wide web,
passes her days painting the diversity of

marshland, woodland, & shoreline;
building her own dehydrator fashioned from
my father’s work ladders, joined together
by discarded swimming pool pole perched

high to discourage the neighbor’s cats
that invade the yard scavenging for koi
“Vitamin D” she says, as she harnesses
the sun, in the backyard the drying device

mutates into painting, slow dripped
sugar spilling out of one kaki fruit
empty space where my father untethers
another persimmon, he swallows whole

Had to research yesterday what sort of morgue Joel-Peter Witkin used to stage his Mexico City series in 1990. It was a forensic hospital morgue specifically. Witkin apparently received a poetry fellowship from Columbia concurrent with his art studies. I'd be curious to see some of that writing. I have a lot of aversion to looking at Witkin's photos of decapitation and dismemberment. They are smart and art historical for sure, but the mortification of the body, is well, mortifying.

The neighbors: I am going to have to reframe my conception of them as "racists" to "friendly but ignorant racists." We called local management and then I called corporate headquarters management in the Big D and spoke to a community relations/PR person specifically about issues of safety, racism, history, oppression, and hostility towards people of color and what comprises a community. After the local management intervened, the flag moved back about 3 feet - from the balcony to cover the outer window. After corporate's intervention, the flag stayed where it was, but the neighbors hung two dark blue Asian lanterns from their balcony and put up outside their door a tacky decorative pumpkin hanging emblazoned with "welcome!" The BF asked, "Why Asian lanterns?" The issue has gone beyond what is absurd and it's hard to not laugh, while also crying at the senselessness.

Kort's got a job interview on Thursday in Austin. So maybe we move to Austin and be done with country living.

Where's a fucking windhorse banner when you need it?!