Dean Okamura

Imperishable cities

Italo Calvino writes of 

Invisible Cities, 

composed of 

citizens, 

who 

settled in places, 

who were so similar 

that Calvino could name 

their city, describe 

their unique quarter, 

their hopes, 

their aspirations, 

their beliefs, and 

their desires. 

As the pages flash before me, 

I take flight out of my mind, 

where verbs blur into nouns, 

spaces become fog, 

paper transforms translucent, 

disappears at horizons, and 

rises over the expanding seas. 

A rush pushes me far 

deeper into the confines of my seat, 

then lifts us into the clouds. 

In that rarified air, Calvino’s spell 

transports me to a city 

of nubile girls who marry, 

of parents who exchange goods — 

bergamot, sturgeon roe, 

astrolabes, amethysts — 

which reveal everything you wish 

about this city in the past, present, and future. 

The book retreats 

as I touch down. 

I arrived here in my first youth, 

passed a Phoenix, who flew beyond 

children, parents, grandparents, 

through ash-filled clouds of memory. 

It’s all there, 

and all nowhere, 

curated in libraries who forgot 

their names and lives. 

I open the archives, 

re-visit the past, 

where we preserve respect 

for our ancestors. 

A prison once held us 

in the desert.

The barracks are gone, but 

scars spilled into blood. 

We ran from prison and settled 

in cities with foreign names, 

cities that reveal everything in 

the past, present, and future. 

Places closed 

become open. 

Screaming children mature 

into great-great-grandparents. 

This city overrun with 

diverse organic desires, 

broad ripples of reflections, 

stirred by claws on our toes. 

When the water becomes still, 

the present intertwines with the past 

till you rise with a phoenix and 

we embrace. 

Written during United Airlines flight from Los Angeles, California, to Phoenix, Arizona, November 29, 2021, with a stopover in the City of Dorothea which appears in Italo Calvino’s experimental novel Imaginary Cities. 

"A prison," from 1942 to 1945, Gila River Relocation Center, Arizona. Canal Camp, Okamura Family 40313, Block 4-7-D.

Poetic Abstraction

IT would be     A   miracle 

               IF I wrote     A   poem 

          THAT was     Something 

                                   MORE than     Another 

               HAPPY Experiment. 

The woman snores

The woman snores in her bed 

because they gave her 

strong anxiety medications. 

They say she hit the helpers 

in the bathroom, shouting 

Don’t touch me. 

Leave me alone. 

I do not need your help. 

I can clean myself. 

They said she wandered 

the halls at night 

entering each room. 

Perhaps for that brief contact, 

they over-prescribed medications?

She must have been lost in 

the six-person assisted living home, 

looking for her new bed. 

But no wandering now. 

The evening sedative 

makes her sleep. 

In fact, she is asleep for most 

daylight hours. Stuck in 

a fog of endless forgetfulness. 

Friends, family, interests, 

everyone lost in that marvelous mind, 

locked behind shuttered eyelids. 

Perhaps for that brief contact, 

they cast her into the shadow lands? 

You greet her. 

Your eyes do not meet. 

Years of politeness 

trained her to respond, 

Yes, or Okay, 

or appear to chuckle. 

Then she goes back to sleep 

and snores and snores 

like her dead husband. 

The eyelid blinds 

crack open as if to peek 

at a traveling sales agent. 

Perhaps for that brief contact, 

there was conscious life? 

They told me not to pray 

for someone to die 

to spare them the pain. 

They say we don’t know 

what she experiences. So, 

we cannot decide. 

There are always miracles. 

There are always new cures. 

Do not give up hope. 

Yet, one can lose faith — 

assuming they believed once — 

with too many unanswered prayers. 

Perhaps for that brief contact, 

we have no words—no prayers? 

A maple leaf dangles 

in the autumn wind, 

sunshine on red faces. 

Perhaps for that brief contact, 

they linger in stillness? 

Perhaps for that brief contact, 

they snore while they sleep?