indecent hours

James Fujinami Moore

• Publisher: Four Way Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781954245129
• eBook ISBN:
  9781954245204
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

For award-winning poet James Fujinami Moore, the past is never past. In this brutal debut, sensual, political, and imagined worlds collide, tracing a history of diaspora and trauma that asks: what do we do in the aftermath of violence, and why do we long to inflict it? From Vegas boxing rings and the restless sands of Manzanar to the scrolling horrors of a Facebook feed, Moore's poems trace over intimate details with surprising humor, fierce eroticism, and a restless eye.

1.

—And indeed the dead man gave no more trouble. Nothing at all happened.

notes on the fog

Dear brother,

after they brought him home,

to the home, all of us lost

weight.

It wasn’t solidarity.

It was

decay. My shoulders eroded

from not hitting the gym.

I only write to you when the bad news comes.

You’re tired. Do you want to go to bed? Do you want to just sit?

—

Dear brother,

how does the world make trenches,

if not out of dead fathers?

How does the world make fathers

if not out of driving to school?

(Did he read to you? He read to me too.)

He believed he raised a good son.

He raised a son

who didn’t believe. And when he fell

he fell soundless

into the sea.

—

And so I use this detergent, and this setting should be fine?

Yes, but don’t wash them with those clothes,

they’re your father’s, they’re contaminated.

Okay, I’ll

Put them on the floor.

The floor.

Not on top of the dryer,

the floor.

—

Dear brother,

they will bury him one plot over from you.

—

Dear brother,

this is what I wanted to say:

that the nurse came in

to do exercises with father, sets of curls,

flys, swims. It was a long-

term maintenance thing.

And mother stood up

all banana-yellow sanitary gown

and did them together, too,

and there was a move

the nurse called the Travolta,

and it looks just like you’d think, and our

mother (grave as a stone) bobs on her heels,

wiggles her hips, the nurse counts

the reps, and father is laughing and laughing

and lit in the eyes of the sun

and for a moment a moment

I’d never seen this (have you?)

they’re dancing

they’re dancing again

—

Dear brother,

long parts of me are still wolves.

in the dormitories after dark

Understand:

they carried the boy

naked, hogtied to a pole,

down the hallway and I stood by.

It was punishment. He had

been late too many times,

and the older boys stripped

him down for—

amusement—he smiled

at first, too.

I stood there, beside—

or by—hearing them chant

shower, shower

their faces grabby at each

humiliation, shining

from inside with it & made

brighter & even then

I knew it was holy, a ritual to bind

us, a secret, the words

that even years later

lying beside you

I’d refuse to say. Lying by.

Even now, after your touch

has faded, I still remember this:

the great white mass of him

hung from the pole and swinging.

How after a while he stopped

smiling. How heavy it was

when it was my turn

to carry it.

the animals

It was probably meant to be

a lesson about responsibility—

how to care for something dependent

on you. In the kindergarten

we had hamsters,

mice, half a dozen fish;

an ark of approved animals

that we traded off daily

to feed. Each named

in crayon placard

placed before the cage. It was probably

meant to be a lesson about death—

a certain kind of death—

how later, one girl’s grandpa died

and we were quiet, imagining

the size of the shoebox.

The day they were slaughtered,

skul...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• of the future, based on the flight patterns of certain birds
• 1.
• 2.
• 3.
• 4.
• notes
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author