From a Three-Cornered World

James Masao Mitsui

• Verlag: University of Washington Press
• Jahr: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780295802671
• Thema: Social Sciences
• Thema: Asian American Studies

From a Three-Cornered World presents 60 poems by James Mitsui, 25 of them new. His poetry has, over two decades' time and three previous volumes, asserted a strong and significant voice within the growing tradition of Asian American literature. Mitsui's poems contain a family history of immigration to the Pacific Northwest from Japan and the assimilation of American culture over three generations, including the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. His vignettes of family life are gems of bittersweet humor and tenacious affection, revealing a deft and earthly poetic charm. Mitsui ranges over many subjects and deals with major themes in language that is spare yet lyrical, expressing historical insight in profoundly moving imagery.

I / from Journal of the Sun 1974

Destination: Tule Lake Relocation Center
May 20, 1942

She had raised the window

higher

than her head; then

paused

to lift wire spectacles,

wiping

sight back with a wrinkled

hand-

kerchief. She wanted to watch

the old

place until the train’s passing

erased

the tarpaper walls and tin roof,

she had

been able to carry away

so little.

The fingers of her left

hand

worried two strings

attached

to a baggage tag

flapping

from her

lapel.

Photograph of a Child,
Japanese-American Evacuation,
Bainbridge Island, Washington,
March 30, 1942

The soft sound of his steps on the pier

is obscured by the heavy footfall

of the adults, rippling the planked deck.

One hand reaches above his head

to wrap around father’s ring finger,

the other clutches a balsa model

of a U.S. fighter plane, held

upside down against his chest.

He is the only one who uses this time

to peer between the cracks at his feet,

trying to see the shiny ribs of water,

imagine a monstrous flounder hugging

the sediment, both eyes staring

from the top of its flat head.

Picture of a Japanese Farmer, Woodlands,
California, May 20, 1942

His waiting becomes a time to hear thoughts, the sound

of unseen sparrows, the glance for any movement

from a road on the other side of dark eyes.

It is the tossing down of a cigarette,

the quiet imprint of a twisting foot.

Behind him a butcher paper sign on a mailbox

sells what will be awkward tomorrow. Feet in black

Sunday shoes are stable as the block of wood on end

used for a seat. Elbows on knees, he looks hard

at the packed earth. Another cigarette

waits between fingers like an artist’s brush.

Willows drift sap in their shadows, coating the man,

the ground and the top half of a discarded oil drum

on its side. The bottom has no viscous coat.

Dust will not adhere for this plain reason.

Section Hand, Great Northern Railway

I. LAMONA, 1953

Finding my father’s current

wine bottle slouched

in a wooden rainbarrel, one night,

I grabbed it by the neck

like an old, long-handled

grenade and tossed it over our

garage, towards the creek.

The dark glass tumbled,

somersaulted into the night,

a pint of used blood.

I planted another bottle

filled with rainwater and fragments

of dead leaves, hid, and could

only laugh when he came out

for a drink, sputtered and swore

at a world that wouldn’t understand

half-Japanese, half-English.

II. SKYKOMISH, 1913. A PHOTOGRAPH

With eyebrows like black smears

of stage paint my father, at 25,

takes a stance on our front porch.

No one would dare brush past

his dark face, his pockets

conceal strong small hands.

No one would dare to tip

his bowler hat, ridicule

a checkered tie, or snap

those elastic bands anchoring

the loose sleeves of his shirt.

Links of a watch chain dangle

in an arc from a belt loop

to the watch pocket in his vest.

He is a match for the chair beside him:

its wood, carved like the ruffled

wing feathers of a pheasant.

The Morning My Father Died, April 7, 1963

The youngest son, I left the family inside and stood

alone in the unplanted garden by a cherry tree

we had grown ourselves, next to a burn barrel

smoldering what we couldn’t give away or move

to Seattle. Looking over the rusty edge I could see

colors of volcano. Feathers of ash floated

up to a sky that was changing. I stared at the sound

of meadowlarks below the water tank

on the basalt cliff where the sun would come.

I couldn’t stop smelling sagebrush, the creosote

bottoms of posts; the dew that was like a thunderstorm

had passed an hour ...