Three Poems by Shaw Patton
Skin Remembers Heat of Springs
Small bottles of Suntory snuck into his daily allowance of tea
who was I to rat him out when he grinned with silver crowns showing?
After he was cut off from water
for the day,
he would resolve to soak in it
slide of glass door,
slosh of water,
groan of metal
as he settled in the tub—silence then save for the children at the junior high
across the street, a baseball team shouting in unison
But well before his kidneys gave out,
when he, even at 50, could climb the steepest hills
on his one one-speed bike, myself a child on the rear rack,
fingers hooked through the loops of his slacks,
Every summer I visited Japan, I was dragged
to some onsen ryokan, nestled deep in the hills
purported healing properties depending on
whether the water there was filled with
rust sulphur sodium bi carbonate
A couple times a day, sit naked, awkward on wood stools
In a line of other naked men, spray off
our bodies, saunter over and lower ourselves in
the impossibly hot water from the piped-in springs
Otherwise, peruse the grounds in patterned
yukata, which grew shorter on me each summer until
like a small dress on a tall woman they fit more like a skirt
My heels sticking out of the largest geta available
My height coming from my Japanese side,
but my large feet from my white, Anglo genes
When I was younger the onsen were more elaborate
Giant complexes with Greek-like statues and multiple pools
But my grandfather settled for the small and modest as he aged
And as I aged, I was allowed to trek to the onsen alone.
No longer tied to my grandfather’s schedule, I usually
went in the mornings, when fewer crowded the tiled room
It’s on some of these solo journeys that
I am most perplexed, still, by what I witnessed
The oddest: a young man with a giant erection
As he stepped out of the water,
circled around as if lost
occasionally swatted down at his dick—as if this would help
To be frank: if the population of Japanese men is said to
skew small, he was clearly no example, finally leaving the bathing area
no hint of embarrassment on his face, though his posture did seem odd
Another time, holding my towel in front of me as the
cleaning lady busied herself in the changing room,
which I guess is common enough, as I have now learned
My earliest memories at the springs are not with my grandfather, but accompanying my
mother or aunt to the womens’ side of the onsen
curious to the forms over there—not yet
sexualized for me but fascinated still by breasts, triangle patches of hair, a vague sense
of softness.
I never formally learned the names of the 19 minerals
Each onsen is purported to be a mixture of—like an elixir
But I can still recall how different pools of water settled and coated my skin
Like different tastes hitting the tongue, tastes I have no names for
I bathed with my grandfather through the first half of my elementary school years
For he, like many Japanese, took to ofuro like a religion, instructed me
methodically how to scrub from the tips of my fingers to the tips of my toes
Strict as the lines of daimoku, ended the ritual by filling a pan
to wash my face
This act broken now,
as I just spray my face directly with the shower head,
scrub erratically,
like a dog,
like a distillation
like the American I am.
The scenery with the gods
There
I bought a flower I saw
From today two nights three
days trip nikko kinugawa onsen
I click translate on my mother’s
Facebook posts, a necessity now, for she would not
translate then. Letting the algorithms twist the words,
their digital fingers gripping a Bowflex® Max Trainer®
pull together phrases I cannot know,
the gap between me and my mother who is
Back home at my parent’s home:
Fine weather
Kawagoe empty
The clouds are getting shape
change flow
The day quickly fell.
Tale of the milky way
and dream without string like...
Near You, you go "
It is so delicious. ~~
It’s only slices of her I see, only slices of anyone I
see really, but it’s nice to get the Cliff Notes® version
of her on a balcony overlooking a Kawagoe suburb,
raspy children chanting, the smell of sesame oil wafting
from downstairs, hanging her new shawl alongside pantyhose,
purchased recently after visiting Baba, who is now
to stay in
the hospital to go to
the hospital to go home
You check I became fun...
Key Chain 480 Yen-Yen
and pop-pop
Cute Bag Charm I could!!
A Hello Kitty® purse and matching charm,
$4.23 at the current exchange rate, iconic
red bow, blank stare from black dot eyes,
a lack of mouth so consumers can project their
own emotions and thoughts, but past the thrill of
the sale I do not know what my mother would project,
on the cat, even if I asked I am not sure she’d understand
keep conversations to the weather, shopping finds,
her favorite foods which include
On Top of the daikon radish,
Celia's one hundred
yen-why in the cart.
From the cold plenty
of vegetables soup
The exchange rate on the accompanying
photo exceptionally high for I can see
the ingredients in the bowl of oden,
the daikon radish floating in a brown stew with
fish cakes, quail eggs, seaweed tied into bows:
my Jiji’s favorite dish, one of the few he used to
help Baba prepare, stirring the pot at the kotatsu
In Japan when you are hungry you tell someone
your stomach has decreased, when you are thirsty
you tell them your throat is dry,
I'm going to tell you something
that's not enough.
From the beginning to the end,
there is no shortage of explanation.
I'm sorry, but this is not possible
in Japan!
As I grasp for what is possible,
staring at a translation of zeros and ones
in what I realize is simply one step
in an ever increasing number of translations—
kanji to roman alphabet to words to thought
I cannot help but wonder if I am more deprived
than ever, stuck in some purgatory loop,
Babel collapses, is rebuilt, collapses again in a
Tohoku earthquake
for the revival of it...
Ikejime out when it will be?
Do oh oh oh oh
It's a little bit lonelier
It’s a little bit lonelier
after all
I maintain the fruit plucked before the fall
was a mango, its blush
of poison sweet
cat sandpaper tongue
near center stone, skin
scented peach-pine
fist-sized yellow heart
the femme fatale fruit
just as sensual as
pomegranate
or strawberry,
grape when fed to
on lectus reclined
sensual as poison
dart frogs, warnings
which advertise death
also scream taste
the serpent was hardly
needed for Eve to bite
underhand the mango
when we could allow
ourselves to fall
head over heels
for poke berries
or wild cherries
but when I am reborn
as a flying fox in
South Western Ghats
I’ll feast on mangos
exclusively, live in
mango trees, reminded
of my former life
the scent of my lover
for though I’ve crushed wild
berries between my fingers
I’ve yet to taste
what they offer
and as fruit bat I'll forget
I ever wanted anything else
About Shaw Patton
Shaw Patton is a Japanese-American who can barely speak Japanese. Since high school he has lived in Florida. He co-owns a restaurant in Tallahassee and got his MFA from FSU. He has poems published in The Matador Review and Talking Writing.