Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

First-Snow Festival, 1806
My lips are a small red bonfire. Other nights
they frost the color
of cricket wings.
I move with the alleyway’s chill
seeping under purple clouds in the soft smoke
of people using
whatever paper is left to float fires
down the river. A hand reaches
from the shadows. The entire time
it does not lift from my breast.
Six months have passed since you’ve seen me
not as I am now but as I most desire to remember
myself—wearing a white obi over a violet
kimono, speaking of Hokusai, reciting Buson.
My ears adjust to the first snow like a depth
of erasures. The final notes of the temple bell
cling like ash on my tongue.
My arms fall with the darkness. My sleeves
are empty. I have only these stumps to ask alms
of the daimyo, and he tries to give me his daughter.
Clouds scroll
over thatched roofs. The sky is not clear of the white faces
thawing. When the hushed wind across the river
leans closer
to speak, memory undoes my burning hair.
60 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
Shawn Fawson