Pipe Dreams

Pipe Dreams Though I have a woman’s heart; it pounds with dragon’s fire. Curled about the core of self, I have lain in wait for Asia with claw, and horn. Linked-locks and keys have spined beneath my hand upon the tourist’s rails of China’s Great Wall where builder’s bones rattle for redress upon the wind. It is not China’s Long but Ryu ’s heart which pounds. This was no place, no place for me. Paper boats zhezhi have blessed my dreams. The Divine Wind eases my way across a sea of longing to Nippon. My two-chambered heart can have but one loyalty— I say no to the soldiers, strident in beige and red— Senkaku’s waves buoy me. Buddhist temples waver mirage-like in a gray-white haze of frankincense, the scent of ever after, lays about me. For links of love and family, are stronger, than those of coercion and the gun—I will island shelter—refine remnants—separate myself from clay become porcelain— beneath tori arches; I walk. A stream in Kyoto a bronze statue of a ballerina dancing on point within a circle of gnats— First Published in the Spring of 2017 by Illumen