Muddy Sake by Kathleen Hellen

Tired of cherry, tired of this world, I sit facing muddy sake and black rice. Matsuo Bashō

 

they’ll never love you
my mother said

sipping from the warrior’s o-choko
the wine served best when heated, sipped 

the rice hauled up in nets, like fish, from fields
for generations

wine the poets tend
like ritual, rice

in handfuls, rolled and fanned, sniffed
vatted—perhaps
over-nurtured

my mother said
as sure as snow will fall again
in Sudo Honke

no milk stops at our doorstep
no pyramid of pap
no wholesomeness three sizes bigger, fatter 

who were these half-calf kids
who schooled me in belonging? 

what’s 2 percent
of fitting in? 


Born in Tokyo, half Japanese, Kathleen Hellen has won prizes from the H.O.W. Journal, Washington Square Review, and Washington Writers’ Publishing House for her collection Umberto’s Night. Hellen’s poems have appeared in Barrow Street, The Boiler, The Carolina Quarterly, Colorado Review, Evergreen Review, jubilat, The Margins, New Letters, North American Review, Poetry International, Subtropics, The Sycamore Review, Verse Daily, and West Branch, among others. Her credits include two chapbooks, The Girl Who Loved Mothra and Pentimento. Hellen’s latest poetry collection is The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin.