completely unmistakable,
so I took my elderly parents south
to my aunt in Iwaki, who refused
to even open her door to us because
she said we were contaminated
then we tried a temporary shelter
but it was full, so we came home
again to the no go zone, and when
other relatives agreed to take in
my parents, I stayed behind
to care for the abandoned animals
I’ve seen many terrible things:
cages filled with withered songbirds,
horses left to starve in their stalls,
an abandoned puppy that grew
too big for the chain around its neck
I rescue as many as I can:
the dog trapped inside a barn
for months, who survived by eating
the dead flesh of starved cattle
or the feral ostrich so vicious
the police who border patrol
the nuclear exclusion zone
armed with Geiger counters
nicknamed her The Boss
all over Tomioka, the animals
recognize the sound of my truck,
and come running to meet me
when I make my daily rounds
many come to stay with me
at my family’s old rice farm
living without water
or electricity in the ruins
of the town where I was born
is sometimes very lonely
I wait for cancer or leukemia
and joke to The Boss about
becoming a superhero through
a radioactive ostrich bite
sometimes I think of visiting
my two kids, who live
with my ex-wife in Tokyo,
but then I remind myself
of the invisible dust coated
in cesium particles that’s in
my clothes, my hair, my skin
I remember I can see my future
in the sick animals I care for
in the American Watchmen comics,
Dr. Manhattan was once tricked
into believing he’d given everyone
he ever loved cancer, through
exposure to his radioactive body
just the thought of this undid him,
made him feel so solitary and blue
he left the earth behind for eons,
to brood in exile on the moon
hungry tsunami / tsunami as galactus
the hunger of trying to hold back
the hunger a little bit longer
the hunger of restraint and pullback
churn and growl of beached fishes
in an agitated bouillabaisse
liquid silver squirming on an empty shore
to lick the gilding from the buildings
like golden drizzles of caramel
to take the cake / flick off the crumbs
to raze the fruit / spit out the pits
the hunger of sucked-out marrow
the unwillingly pried-open oyster
the cracked and pillaged lobster claw
to shuck / to husk / to unshell
her way to what’s most tender
to dismantle the protective scrims
that signal a cache of rawness
to demolish defenseless succulence
the hunger for the liquid center
squirt of ganache in a swiss truffle
chocolate lava cake’s molten fondant core
to feed past the end of greed
to feast past the end of want
to gorge past the borders of voraciousness
until she becomes the monstrous goddess
of binge / pure mercenary lack
the blooded face
blood in the water
the blood moon’s exposed sweet throat
with its lipsticked jugular bitten clean out
mothra flies again
I knew it was a bad omen
when silk moth cocoons hung
unhatched like stillborn husks
from the mulberry trees—
imagoes
