Murmurs and Bones

Published April 21, 2022 comments

We are honored to present three pieces here from South Dakota State Poet Laureate (2015-2019), Lee Ann Roripaugh. A personal and clanging reflection on the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami and earthquake, these poems are stunning murmurations of memory hitting against bone, of shadows that never quite evaporate, of ghosts alive and well in our presence. Enjoy…

—traci kato-kiriyama

* * * * *

Lee Ann Roripaugh’s fifth volume of poetry, tsunami vs. the fukushima 50 (Milkweed Editions, 2019), was named a “Best Book of 2019” by the New York Public Library, selected as a poetry Finalist in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards, cited as a Society of Midland Authors 2020 Honoree in Poetry, and was named one of the “50 Must-Read Poetry Collections in 2019” by Book Riot. She is the author of four other volumes of poetry: Dandarians, On the Cusp of a Dangerous Year, Year of the Snake, and Beyond Heart Mountain. Winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004, and a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series, she was the South Dakota State Poet Laureate from 2015-2019. Roripaugh is a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Director of Creative Writing and Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review.

animal portents foretell the rise of tsunami

when elephants kneel
pressing their trunks
down to the ground
like seismic antennae

  when mole rats head-drum
  adumbrations / listen for
  predictions / augured jawbones
  snugged to tunnel walls

  when cats spill from windows
  slip through opened doors
  some welder’s torch sizzle
  fizzing the tips of their whiskers

  when insect swarms clot the shore
  in a frantic tangled macrame
  and hippopotamuses bellow
  a chorus of mournful cellos

  when snakes awaken
  from hibernation / curlicuing
  up from their dens
  like bolts come unscrewed --
  their frozen bodies
  a semiology of hieroglyphs
  in the snow:

  takadai ni tatsu
  takadai ni tatsu
  takadai ni tatsu
  hayaku nigeru

when double-helixes spun by skeins
of flying sparrows unravel

when centipedes appear
in rippling synchronicities

  when colonies of toads erupt
  like burst popcorn
  from ponds’ silver foil

when fish come unschooled

when bees abandon their queens
flee their honey

when silky clusters of bats lift
in smoky volcanic furies as if

rising / from a city ravished / in flame

white tsubame

  after the tsubame disappeared,
  white feathers started sprouting
  from my shoulders and back
  in a furious itch of stiff follicles,
  the weird tickle of snowy down

  it all began when more and more
  damaged butterflies appeared
  with stunted or crumpled wings

  and the stained glass windows
  of cicadas’ wings turned into
  a tangled lace mesh crocheted
  by a bent, contaminated hook

  soon the hypnotic thrum
  and drone pulsing the horizon
  during late summer nights
  fell silent: no power-tool surge
  of cicadas, no squeak-shined
  scrubbing or tambourine jingle
  from the katydids and crickets

the gwa gwa gwa of frogs
stopped from invisible ponds

  and even towns just outside
  the nuclear exclusion zone
  became ghost towns, too,
  when barn swallows lost
  all of their blues, turning
  into albino ghosts, before
  abandoning their mud nests
  tucked under house eaves,
  leaving them to decay until
  all of the birdsong was gone
  and everything was irradiated
  by a blinding wash of silence

  my parents begged me
to tell no one about
  the white swallow wings
  feathering my back

  my father worked for TEPCO
  cleaning up radioactive topsoil
  in the no go zone
  and didn’t want any trouble

  my mother was worried
  I’d be shunned as damaged,
  so she bound down
  my wings every morning
  until they ached under gauze
  and I felt crumpled
  and stunted as one of
  the deformed butterflies,
  or the pruned-down bonsai
  my grandfather in Ukedo
  trained to grow into
  strange transfigurations

  before my grandfather
  disappeared during the tsunami
  I visited him every year
  during amba matsuri—
  the festival of the safe wave

  I loved how he split open
  fresh salmon with a silver
  fish knife to squeeze out
  sticky orange roe directly
  onto hot rice for breakfast

  now coastal fishing boats
  rock crippled in their harbors,
  crumpled sails pinned down,
  going on fake runs, only
  so scientists can test
  for cesium levels in the fish

  my wings grow larger
  and more unwieldy, become
  difficult for me to hide
  underneath my hoody

  sometimes I stand on the roof
of the tallest building
  in Minamisoma and think that
  if I jumped, then everyone
  would finally know the truth

  barn swallows are said
  to be harbingers of luck
  so maybe I could be like
  the tsubame who returns,
  bearing good fortune

  I could fly across the river
  looping over water
  bright with the hot swirl
  of irradiated golden carp

  I could fly all the way
  across the border patrols
  into the no go zone

  I could fly all the way
  back to Ukedo to search
  for my missing grandfather
  because ever since
  the insects died off
  and stopped their singing,
  I can hear his lost
  and desecrated bones
tapping out an SOS
  into the too-quiet nights:

please help me
I am lost

ghosts of the tohoku coast

of course, the ghosts are everywhere:

the face that blooms confused
in an unfurling peony bud

  the dog who doesn’t know it’s dead
  returning to search for the child
  who used to pet and play with it

  the fisherman who comes to shore
  with early morning’s neatly mended nets
  looking for his small docked boat

taking taxi rides / wanting to go home
demanding to know: am I still alive?

oyurushi / oyurushi

whisked tea leaves whispering
from the bottom of a cup

the dancing funnel cloud of dust
that rises from a beaten futon

  a murmuration of tiny gnats
  helixing up like incense from
  shriveled fruit at the broken altar

the jumble of unsortable bones
dustpanned out to sea

  the husband / the wife
  the mother / the daughter
  the son / the father
  the sister / the brother

all searching for what’s been lost

  driven by the electric pain
  of phantom limbs
  seizing up like dowsing rods

  the grief of empty cicada shells
  for what’s been torn out trying
  to fill themselves back up
  with the transparency of rain

  how many centuries will it take
  for these stricken mists
  and fogs to be burned away?

  for this haunted water
  to evaporate / to be exorcised
     and rinsed clean again by light?

*These poems are from tsunami vs. the fukushima 50, Milkweed Editions, 2019 and copyrighed by the author.

Lee Ann Roripaugh literature poetry

About this series

Nikkei Uncovered: a poetry column is a space for the Nikkei community to share stories through diverse writings on culture, history, and personal experience. The column will feature a wide variety of poetic form and subject matter with themes that include history, roots, identity; history—past into the present; food as ritual, celebration, and legacy; ritual and assumptions of tradition; place, location, and community; and love.

We’ve invited author, performer, and poet traci kato-kiriyama to curate this monthly poetry column, where we will publish one to two poets on the third Thursday of each month—from senior or young writers new to poetry, to published authors from around the country. We hope to uncover a web of voices linked through myriad differences and connected experience.

Logo design by Alison Skilbred

About the Authors

Lee Ann Roripaugh

traci kato-kiriyama @traciakemi

traci kato-kiriyama is a performer, actor, writer, author, educator, and art+community organizer who splits the time and space in her body feeling grounded in gratitude, inspired by audacity, and thoroughly insane—oft times all at once. She’s passionately invested in a number of projects that include Pull Project (PULL: Tales of Obsession); Generations Of War; The (title-ever-evolving) Nikkei Network for Gender and Sexual Positivity; Kizuna; Budokan of LA; and is the Director/Co-Founder of Tuesday Night Project and Co-Curator of its flagship “Tuesday Night Cafe.” She’s working on a second book of writing/poetry attuned to survival, slated for publication next year by Writ Large Press.

Updated August 2013