Mt. St. Helens
My brother stole a car and drove me to Mt. St. Helens
where geologists cough up ash and cinder and their own blood
trying to prove that all mountains
have roots.
I’ll believe them, I tell my brother that St. Helens
wears her guts on the outside – like he does
grey and green and angry, his grin
an empty stomach, his voice a portrait
of young criminal courage.
My brother
the highwayman – disowned, permanently
estranged. Our parents say he’s always been rotten
at the core, but could they prove it? They taught me not
to trust anything ill-supported, and anyway, I ride
shotgun in his hotwired cars, smoke his cigarettes
secondhand, I cough up all sorts of
electromagnetic, radioactive, pyroclastic plumes
hot air and molten rock
and when we stop to look up at the mountain –
open-mouthed –
I know better than to say anything.
______________
Birds
The house I left in August
is nothing
but a death-trap for birds.
They break their necks against
the windows my mother feverishly polishes in November.
They die quietly in the backyard.
I once found three tiny, screaming chicks
in the gutter under the mailbox.
I was twelve which meant
elbows like table-corners
legs that bent like jewelry-wire –
my mother’s bones
hollow like a bird’s.
They died in the garage,
nestled in Wednesday’s newsprint,
under a warm light
and my sister’s steadfast scrutiny.
Their bright, black, glass-bead eyes
were half-open
when I brushed away the ants
that were trying to eat their feet.
______________
To The Sea, The Sea of Mud
After they drained
the reservoir under the highway,
we found a sea of mud.
He called it a giant’s thumbprint.
God, aren’t we
small?
Still wearing
clean clothes from work,
I pointed to a place in the center
where water still sadly pooled.
I want to go there, I said.
___________________________
Kate Fujimoto grew up in Hawaii and studies English in Washington. She is sometimes hungry. She makes music here (kateofkate.bandcamp.com). People say she dresses like a grandmother.