Hello Slushies, new and old. Welcome to another episode of the Slushpile! On this week’s podcast, we will be discussing poems by Yumi Dineen Shiroma.
First up is a MEGApoem and no, we are not over-exaggerating. However, here at the Painted Bride Quarterly, we always go big or go home, so Kathleen took two deep breaths and jumped right into reading the first poem, “Welcome to Connecticut”. Immediately, we were quick to realize that even though it would be a difficult one to read for a podcast, it was oh so worth it.
Samantha compared this to the work of Tommy Orange and his book, "There, There." Marion recalled Middlemarch, and other literary works came to mind (if we can call The Omen literary?).
This is a piece that took us into the mind of Yumi and its rhythm was “like a flood”. The crew felt as if the inner-dialogue brought them into a world of its own with memories so grand, we just want to stay in that moment, or literally-speaking, re-read certain lines to relive it.
This poem brought a lot of suppressed memories for our Tim Fitts, one of which was a terrifying flashback of a woman driving with a dog on her lap, while texting. The least she could have done was pick one reckless decision at a time, or better yet, just drive?
All in all, this fun and humorous piece awakened a wide range of emotions in the gang, and even had Kathleen’s thumbs up from the moment she read the title. Listen in, to find out the direction of everyone else’s opposable thumbs.
The next poem titled “A Surfeit of Saturation and Light / Hungry Ghost,” smartly used nouns as verbs and vice versa. Our own music genius, Tim Fitts, also said that this poem had a perfect pitch, so who are we to argue with that!
Yumi’s second piece was consensually described as "weird without being goofy" and "smart without being pretentious.” Now that would make a million-dollar t-shirt!
It seems both poems dived into the subconscious of the gang because Marion was reminded of the time she was possessed by demon in Singapore. You just have to listen to get the details.
Random yes, but after listening to this podcast, do you agree with Tim Fitts that people are going to start smoking again when the zombies come? In addition, how do they pronounce “water” where you live?
Yumi Dineen Shiroma is a PhD student in English at Rutgers University, where she studies the theory and history of the novel. Her poetry has previously appeared in BOMB, Hyperallergic, Peach Mag, and Nat. Brut, and her chaplet, A Novel Depicting "The" "Asian" "American" "Experience,"was recently published by Belladonna*. You can find her on Twitter at @ydshiroma.
Welcome to Connecticut, Land of Death and Rebirth
I had run through fields in white pants bleeding
from the eye I recalled as I ran through the field
in my white pants bleeding from the eye and you
walked beside me your briefcase your flannel your messenger bag
Your spontaneous face your spontaneous face your
spontaneous face where one won’t expect you are mine
in the field in the valley in the valley in the tunnel
spooled through your spatialized mind you are mine
as a tea-kettle whistles at the heat I love you
tryna drink my cold brew in the window as you walk
by and by and walk by and walk by in my cat’s eye
shade in your shade with the tassel in her ear I am yours
I run my virtual hand through her virtual hand
11:45 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. do yoga stare at trees, location:
trees. I grew so much this year your year gray
hairs an evening fishing for eels in the creek
a season overlays space the meeting of homogeneous
empty and messianic times where time informs our time
spent among any given spatial totality and you walk
by the window and
#thinking about #revenge again she shreds
the straw with my teeth the buttons done up
to the neck like you used to do again
the hand on my head the head-
stubble (oedipal, stacy suggests)
conference next slide none of the backs of the heads
look like you and a season overlays time like you in
cambridge a casaubon like dorothea
in rome a casaubon whose fits in the center
for rare books and special
collections prove non-fatal
the trick was throwing my phone in the compost moving
on with my life in my arms and I walk
ostentatiously past the window as you walk
by the window in my new vegan
leather freezing the air with my breath
gcal notification total knowledge project due
today you have executed your total knowledge project
with aplomb the crowd explodes tickertape and katy perry
songs for him the king of the total knowledge project
breaking a dish on my wrist I watch
from the kitchen your faithful wife and staunch
the blood with the tapestry she weaves night in night
out of my limited intellectual means with its warp
of fact with its weft of I feel like
You fucking moron don’t you know I’m in love, walking you
back and forth my fingers staining the window blocking the natural light
this high noon I still cough at the smoke and the smoke still smells
like you in my lungs bent over your total knowledge project
(sign on the door a girl in a dress reading OMEN)
I love you as a tea-kettle whistles at the heat
as a window won’t lock when the dust weeps in
she allows the pipes to freeze and burst, changes
the locks and you aren’t coming back
recognizing neither my face nor my name
I take the train
you once told me about your people their
parlors and names their inhibitions
how they questioned the wisdom
of classifying even the seemingly non-sexual
passions as libidinal
back in your stomping grounds welcome to connecticut
land of death and rebirth says the wizened
crone on the metro north stirring her coffee a yellow nail
a greek key cup a fleck of krispy kreme in the fates she thought
I would die before she saw rome she thought
she would die before she saw rome she thought
she would take you with me
I once told you about my people how they lacked
objects to organize their lives their fucking a figure
for interconnectedness a leftist poem writ
in my blood just for you the object arrives
with me and ends at last with me in the object-
narrative (you called my name and it was the name of the LORD)
holden will walk me to class the day I can’t
breathe because of my pollen allergy
because I’ve lost you because she’d lost you
sam would bring me a glass of wine in bed
as he walks by the window he walks
by the window he walks by the window you walk
I love you as you walk by the window and she loves you
as I love the pills she swallows with wine to draw
a circle of salt around my heart to keep you out
like a mouth loves a lost tooth drooling blood I love
the way that she loves the pizza delivery
man like the lost and found where he found her umbrella again
between the storm that cold summer day I left it again
again distracted by you
I saw her standing, drawing off her glove, standing contrapposto in her limited edition Doc Martens. I saw her standing in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I saw her standing before a red canvas, standing contrapposto. I said: She looks like the statue of Artemis. I desired to paint her as I would sketch a charcoal sketch of the statue of Artemis, I told her: You look like the statue of Artemis. We debated the merits of visual versus textual representation, their transparency, their potential for eloquent distortion, to reveal the truth of a truth that overwhelms truth with its canvas of red. I saw her stand.
I once told you about my people they were
prophets all, burned in the brain the prophet
who buries herself in new haven will rise from the earth
in 17 years reborn reborn in the mouth of 2013
your name in her mouth like a cut like a cut like I always got lost
in a city any city like the dreams of being naked or lost
in my city I always got lost in the wrong metaphor
like she always got lost in your spatialized mind in the
box house and metaphor and the train and the train
they claimed could only move one way
A Surfeit of Saturation and Light / Hungry Ghost
The foxes hold their wedding at the base of the mountain
They wait for the rainbows to banner the sky
For the rain to fall while the sun shines
Their normative ideas about the future keep them yoked
to such couplings
No matter what dreams they might have held for themselves
Dressed in your finest you buy them two voles off their registry
I catch the bouquet of narcissus, willow and peony
You walk through a field in black and white
and you walk through another field in green
and one in gold
I love you a 29-year-old sprung fully formed
from the pit of a peach
Charisma in your footsteps
and your heart so impetuous
and your eye flits along the fields of differing colors
I stand every day on the New Brunswick train station platform
waiting for you
Tapping my foot with a sound like water on stone
You reproduce yourself exactly in each of your children
My throat is too narrow for the hole in my stomach to be filled
Which is why I need you, stepping from the train, clothed
in the skin of the peach
But you are a bad man
Bumming around in the rice fields
You are the fox in her house dress who sits by the window
watching the hens
Your heart is full of peach pulp and fuzz and the fruit
around the pit is sour
You are not the monk in his field of persimmon trees
You are not the painter eating his blues
Nor are you the blues or their valuable pigment
You are a man who sprang from the pit of a peach
I loved you while my hair was still buzzed with the #3 clippers
I came to meet you, as far as the platform
The oni rifle through my desk for valuables
They take $300 in cash, my ID cards
They take my money to their castle in the sky
I will grow older and you will grow older and the foxes will fuck
beneath the rafters of the porch
You will fight the oni in the sky for me
But I can also fight the oni in the sky
I can climb up to the castle on the hill
You have met so many amazing people on this journey
You have this really special connection with the fox
and the pheasant
and the monkey who stands, hand pressed to his silent mouth
I press and hold my hand to my mouth
I am biting the peach pit in half with my sharp fox teeth