Robert Okaji lives in Texas. His favorite knife is Japanese, as is his tractor. His guitar is Italian. He’s sure this signifies something to someone. The author of five chapbooks, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Riggwelter, Sleet, Eclectica, The Zen Space and elsewhere.
Worms
Yesterday’s cored apple buzzes with light,
another vessel stored in sadness.
I have swallowed vows.
I have replaced air with earth
and enjoyed tongued flesh.
To think is to live. To live is to delay.
Burrowing through the soil’s rich
decay, this body,
accepted. Absorbed.
Self-Portrait as Question
Walking hand-in-hand with what,
who presupposes why, and when
huddles with where before skittering
off to its murky corner. Sometimes
I present myself as a shy minute
or a cloud’s effigy streaming across
a scruffy field. Few suspect the truth.
Answers ricochet from the limestone
wall, but no one nabs them. I react
quickly and offer the unknown, the
life I claim, my name, in return.
Love Song for the Dandelion
When you scatter
I gasp
aware that the windborne
carry truths
too powerful to breathe
too perfect
to bear
What is your name
I ask
knowing the answer
all along
Pinecone on a Pedestal, Open Poet
Look deeper. Within that grain, a mineral,
inside that word, a book
folding into itself,
leaf by leaf,
and farther back,
the cone’s imbricated scales
spiraling in perfect
sequence, or pressed
through another
time, strand by
strand, looming
in shared
simplicity.
Looking through my window I see a hundred trees
growing in the shade of one.
The juniper’s
berry is
no berry.
Bamboo is a grass.
My floor
is not cork
but bears its appearance.
Two halves share this one body.
Open it. What will you find?