Sakai City

By Matt Cooper

I am a teacher and writer working based out of Wichita, Kansas. My mother is a Lakota native-American and my father is Irish-American. It's a lifeblood that has kept my filthy rich even when I was poor and walking the streets of south Broadway. Wealth is relative. Cheers!

Ol’ Dylan Ramos from Maui

We cried together in the genkan

With our shoes off the way our

Mothers demanded of us—

Remembering our dead fathers

And brothers and sisters and

The taste of contentedness.

Then we drank rice wine and ate

Okonomiyaki and whale sashimi

In order that we might be free

Again, from our tears and hoping our

Splayed open hearts might mend—

We walked through old Kyoto and

I strummed you my rendition of

“Redemption Song”, as we thought

Marley might have been singing through

The years just for us, so we might live.

You’re on the big island now away

And I think of you often, how you knew

Japanese but always refused to speak

It because it seemed to remind you

Of your mother’s sadness.

Salut wherever you are in the sea in

The waves inching closer to the heavens.

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