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Frightening Things 

Basho wandered many years 
and returned one day 
to gaze at his umbilical cord 
pickled in a jar. Plopped 
in brine years ago 
like the frog plopping 
the pond in his famous 
haiku. Of course 
fame meant nothing 
to him. He stood 
in the blazing rain 
in his family graveyard 
as a crow squawked overhead 
and knew, gazing at the stones 
there, he was indeed 
the last of his line. 
He kept looking inside 
his raincoat for a missing 
limb or the hole where 
the wind and rain 
flew in. I'll get drunk 
tonight, he thought, 
and his eyelashes glistened 
as he trudged back 
to his hermit's hut 
to gaze again at the jar. 

Things That Have Lost Their Power 

A large boat grounded at ebb-tide, 
its insides caving in like a silent groan, 
splintery frayed ends of boards, gaps 
in the planks, a door fallen off its hinge: 

The woman strayed by in a windbreaker, 
her hair like that of a doll's, blond and plastic, 
smoking a cigarette and talking on a cell phone. 
It was clear she was reprimanding someone, 

some poor subordinate, her beauty 
no longer an issue. But no, 
it wasn't a woman but a balding middle-aged 
man, smoking a cigar, though yes with a cell phone. 

It was as if he owned the whole beach as he stood there: 
Grey indolent gulls waddling the foamy 
tide. A few beer bottles, paper cups. Remnants 
of a bonfire, perhaps a party of teenagers 

the night before. The man kicked one of the bottles 
and the sound clinked with the most infuriating 
negligence to his words, as if 
he were the underling, and not his lawyer, 

stumbling on the other end. Somehow 
it all made me think of a sumo wrestler 
I'd witnessed in Tokyo, just after 
he'd been thrown to the dirt outside the ring, 

and when he rose 
he looked up so as to not look at anyone, 
then walked away with that same gaze, and I 
don't know, but I think that wrestler was me. 

Legend

An only daughter is a needle in the heart 
was how, in one legend, a poet put it. 
Thus the legends of the father at the start of war 
say I must stand on a rocky shore 
and beg the gods for winds to cross the waters 
and battle and destroy the city Troy. 
And the gods shout back: Sacrifice your daughter. 
Or else, in the tale of seven samurai swords, 
I first hide you from brigands 
and then from the warriors 
who would save us for daily rations of rice. 
And what these legends tell us is 
the desires of fathers are foolish 
with fear of their enemies and hatred in their hearts. 
And fear too of how his daughter will part 
her legs and never be seen again 
for this is what happens 
when men write the legends. 
Of course there is no father in these tales 
who descends down the corridors of hell 
and crosses those foul and mysterious waters 
to retrieve from the underworld his only daughter 
and finds the courage to return her each year 
before the leaves may bud and the earth flower. 
Today I wandered with you 
through the aisles of Abercrombie and Fitch 
where all beaming models are ruddy and blonde 
and no dark face mars their endless summer. 
And I want to tell you they are there 
to make themselves rich 
and not because they are foolish and fond 
and love the way your black 
hair shimmers down your lanky brown back. 
But I know you will not listen if I tell you. 
I am the father, my words could destroy you. 
Or bar you from the one blushing samurai 
who gathers flowers on the hill 
and though he desires to know what it is to kill, 
what he desires most is beyond her father 
as she opens for him on a slope of bright flowers 
this summer afternoon with no thought of death 
or how someone must descend in cold autumn showers 
and answer to darkness and darker desires. 


© Copyright 2004 by David Mura from Angels for the Burning (Boa Editions Ltd.)

GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER
IN LOVE

Now I will ask for one true word beyond 
betrayal, that creaks and buoys like the bedsprings 
used by the bodies that begot the bodies that begot me. 
Now I will think of the moon bluing the white 
sheets soaked in sweat, that heard him whisper 
haiku of clover, azalea, the cry of the cuckoo; 
complaints of moles and beetles, 
blight and bad debts, as the biwa 's spirit 
bubbled up between them, its song quavering. 
Now I take this word, crack it, like a seed 
between the teeth, spit it out in the world 
to root in the loam of his greenhouse roses; 
let it leave the sweet taste of teriyaki , 
a grain of her rice lodged in my molars; 
in my nostrils, a faint hot breath of sake . 

Now as otoo-san, okaa-san, drift towards 
each other, there reverberates the ran 
of lovers, and the ship of the past bursts 
into that other world; and she, still teasing, 
pushes him away, swats his hand, a pesky, 
tickling fly, then turns to his face that 
cries out laughing, as he hauls her in, 
trawling the currents, gathering 
a sea that seems endless, depths a boy dreams of, 
where flounder, dolphin, fluorescent fins, fish 
with wings spill before him glittering scales, 
and letting slip the net, he dives under, 
and night washes over them, slipping from 
sight, just the soft shush of waves, drifting ground 
swells, echoing the knocking tide of morning. 



© Copyright 1989 by David Mura from After We Lost Our Way (Carnegie-Mellon University Press) 

The Left Panel of the Dyptich Speaks 

With my black pointed hood 
and my raggedy black gown, its tatters 
like the Wicked Witch might sport 
before she hops on her broom 
to write the sky in black smoke, 
Surrender Dorothy!--I could be 
holding out my hands for a trick 
or treat, like any American 
child on an Halloween eve, 
if not for the wires that spring 
from my palms to the wires 
running up the tiled institutional wall 
and the tall wooden box 
where I perch as if on display 
in some gallery in Soho. 
Just off to the side 
you glimpse half the body 
of a t-shirted guard or patron 
inspecting his fingers--cutting 
his nails?--as if bored 
with the banality of modern art. 
It's difficult to know what to make 
of that, or how my photo 
is paired with a pair of naked men 
one kneeling to one with his head 
in a square plastic sack, 
face to crotch, though the one 
below seems more bent in prayer, 
despite the hands upon his head, 
than into mouthing fellatio. 
Perhaps all this is a commentary 
on the institutional nature of sex 
or the costumes some shed each day 
to enact their dreams at night 
or simply more evidence 
of how the plague of homosexuality 
is corrupting our highest 
organs of culture. At any rate 
nothing in the photo reveals 
what I am breathing in 
in this hood. Or how my keepers 
have dutifully informed me 
if I fall from this precarious spot 
on my soapbox, I will be 
instantly and justly jolted 
by five thousand volts. 


© Copyright 2004 by David Mura, published in Ploughshares 

Things That Make
One's Heart Beat Faster (after Duras) 

The fragmentations that come from submission: 
So you reach a room redolent of incense, 
splashing your face on the elegant Chinese mirror, 
black age spots and cracks in the ancient glass, 
and she emerges from washing her hair, a few 
tears dripping from the strands, her silk robe 
opened, as if she wasn't expecting a visitor 
(these preparations still produce an inner pleasure). 
You look out on the city below through bamboo 
slats, the dusty and sour smells of the street 
not quite drowned out by the incense, the cries 
from hawkers at their stalls, beggars, babies. 
A wind blows dust through the room; it settles 
on the surface of the water in the huge clay jar 
in the corner. You're so bored. Part of you 
wishes you were back in the opium den, feasting 
on certain visions you cannot speak of 
with this white girl, her slim thighs, her teeth 
the color of fine pearls. The way her nostrils 
flare when you disappoint her and tell her 
you're going away for a while, on business, 
it can't be helped. She ties the sash on her robe. 
Slumps on the bed and stares at the ceiling fan 
as if its whirring were the clouds parting overhead 
or two bodies reflected in a mirror, one white, 
one darker yet somehow paler, bleached of light. 
Suddenly you take out your wallet, start tossing 
bills across the bed, landing on her red robe, 
her arms, her legs, her face, her hair. She's 
laughing now, laughing and slapping at the bills, 
as if they were a storm of gnats descending upon her. 
Why do I keep coming back here, you think. 
Yes. How soon I'll be coming back again. 

© All Copyright, 2007, David Mura.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.