Foreign Bodies Read online

  The Daughter

  I told the appraiser, what charmed our parents is now what makes the house unsalable: fifty stone steps leading up to a house secluded in trees and treetops. No one would ever visit, except the meter man and the occasional Jehovah’s Witness—who our father always chased off.

  The Granddaughter

  At Grandpa’s funeral, Mom and Auntie both spoke of their childhood memories, both so different. Had I been offered the chance, I wondered what I would’ve said. On the train home, I jotted down:

  Mothballs.

  Lacquering a bamboo bracelet. Carving a linoleum block, then printing the picture (mine, a turtle).

  The fifty-two slippery stone steps that Mom had to sweep or shovel when she was a teenager.

  Learning to use chopsticks with a rubber band and wad of paper making something like tweezers.

  Seven years after Grandma died, Grandpa took us to Hong Kong where we rode a tram up The Peak and I ate bad hamburger and he wouldn’t let me call Mom “because it’s long distance.” That must have been when Mom and Dad were separating and we didn’t know because they didn’t ever argue.

  In the garden patch behind their house, digging in the compost for worms to feed Turt, the turtle.

  A doll whose heart lit up in the dark. Waffle iron.

  In restrooms Grandma would cover the toilet seat with paper for me.

  Learning to sift flour.

  I am not sure if I remember the smell of mothballs from staying at the house or, if after Grandma died, just from Grandpa’s clothes. I think in the ten years after she died, I only went back to the house a few times. I didn’t want to sleep in that bedroom where I’d slept with Grandma under a comforter, even in summer. Grandpa was that mothball smell.

  The Appraiser to the Two Daughters

  Honestly, there’s no low-balling here. I mean, the stone steps—who’d want to climb them? No garage. No car access (even for a dumpster). Septic tank, yes? Well water? I mean I can’t believe there’s so much rock.

  The Appraiser again to the Daughters

  The cost to demolish may be greater than the property value. No offense, but the house is worth nothing.

  The Daughter again

  After Mother died, Father’s various art projects took on their real shapes: stacks of egg crates and envelopes of beer labels. Buckets of water with soaking bamboo.

  The Daughter again

  Then of course, a jumble of junk mail so dense you couldn’t see the floor. Flowerpots with no plants, with only soil.

  The Father

  It. Is. My. House. Why are those girls telling me I can’t go to my house. I’m going to hail a taxi and take it the whole damn twenty-five miles. Balls.

  The Father to the Daughters

  I had planned, we always did, to dig up bamboo shoots, then parboil them for the girls. But when the bamboo took over the property—even threatening to invade the neighboring yard, even threatening, I think, the foundation of the house—I hired guys to come over and rip it out by the roots. Then they returned and stole a samurai dagger and an antique silk jacket.

  Father’s Second Wife to the Daughters

  You know, all these ten years—or is it nine—anyway, all these years I have never been in that man’s home. He would stay with me most of the week, then return to his house to water the bamboo, etc. etc. At one point I told him that if he didn’t invite me inside, we could just break up. Well that deadline came and went.

  The Daughter again

  She just didn’t get it: how a fastidious dresser, a man who picked lint off the Oriental, might have a home in absolute ruin. She tried mightily to contain the projects that he produced in her apartment and she did pretty well. Even so, when she died I had to haul out everything from sketchbooks to scraps of bamboo. Lots of pieces.

  The Second Daughter to Sister

  I don’t know when his forgetfulness became a thief—ha! I mean belief—that there were guys breaking in.

  The Deceased Wife to her Husband

  You weeded and watered the garden of moss. The moss we’d found and replanted and never thrived, not really. But the bit of bamboo you planted certainly did. So much so that, when you stopped driving and stopped going up to the house, those several plants took over the whole half-acre lot. Along with stinging nettles.

  The Second Daughter again

  I’ve searched online for the tiny burrs that fasten to our pants when at the house. Even back at home, taking darks out of the dryer, I find the sharp things still fastened, even transferred to other clothing. And I am still not sure what the little devils are called.

  The Second Granddaughter

  Rei should add: The bamboo cricket cage. And the paintings of the bamboo cricket cage.

  The Appraiser again to the Daughters

  Let me know what you decide.

  •••

  Notes

  Epigraph

  The lines are an excerpt from Charles Wright’s poem, “College Days.”

  “Object Lessons”

  I have used quotations and information about Dr. Chevalier Quixote Jackson gleaned from a number of sources, most notably from Mary Cappello’s remarkable book Swallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration, and the Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them (New York: The New Press, 2011). Most of the italicized sections are from her book; a few italicized words are for emphasis.

  “Hatchlings”

  This poem was cut from Toxic Flora (2009), then revived last year. I believe the original source was “Calls from Crocodile Eggs Serve as Alerts” by Henry Fountain, The New York Times, June 24, 2008.

  “The Cryptic Chamber”

  The erasure material was taken from “Loving the Chambered Nautilus to Death” by William J. Broad, The New York Times, Science section, October 24, 2011.

  “Cryptic” is a found piece from “Nautilus,” Wikipedia, 2012.

  “She Sells Seashells”

  I have benefited from Shelley Emling, The Fossil Hunter (NY: Palgrave/MacMillan, 2009) and Thomas W. Goodhue, Curious Bones: Mary Anning and the birth of paleontology. (Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds Publishing, Inc., 2002).

  The following lines are from Lord Byron:

  ’Tis time this heart should be unmoved,

  Since others it hath ceased to move . . .

  Black Ven is a cliff in Dorset, England, that is part of what is known as the Jurassic Coast.

  “Likeness—A Self-Portrait”

  Quoted material is from the article “Blink Twice if You Like Me” by Carl Zimmer, The New York Times, June 29, 2009. I have taken some poetic license with the information.

  “After Being Asked If I Write the Occasional Poem”

  I used material from “In Home Village of Girl Who Died in U.S. Custody, Poverty Drives Migration” by Elisabeth Malkin, The New York Times, December 18, 2018.

  “Alloy”

  I have used quotations and information about Isamu Noguchi gleaned from a number of sources, including Isamu Noguchi: Essays and Conversations, edited by Diane Apotolos-Cappadonna and Bruce Altshuler (New York: Harry Abrams Publishers, 1994); and Masayo Duus, The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey without Borders, translated from the Japanese by Peter Duus (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

  “Divine”

  I have used some details from “The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail,” by Dan Barry and Jeffrey E. Singer, The New York Times, October 16, 2018. In a follow-up article published after this poem was written (“ ‘Jane Doe Ponytail’: Her Life Ended in N.Y. Now Her Brother’s Bringing Her [Ashes] Home,” NYT, April 9, 2019), the same journalists reported that Song Yang’s mother and brother did not believe the official account of her death and conducted their own investigation.

  The italicized phrases and lines are from Emily Dickinson’s “Color — Caste — Denomination — ” [836]. The Unisphere was built for the 1964 N.Y. World’s Fair, and the Kosciuszko is a bridge connecting Brooklyn and Queens.

  “After Words for Ava�
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  The humuhumunukunukuapua‘a is Hawai‘i’s state fish.

  “Afterword: The Bamboo Grove Where Various Individuals Mostly Think Aloud”

  I’ve adopted Rashōmon points of view, as made famous by the film based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s combined short stories, “Rashōmon,” and “In a Grove.”

  Acknowledgments

  My tremendous thanks to the writers who took time from their own art to read and comment on these poems: in particular to Nicole Cooley, Lynn Emanuel, Paul Lisicky, Stephen Miller, Rajiv Mohabir, Dara Weir, Abby Wender, and my dear husband Harold Schechter. Thanks also to Beowulf Sheehan for his magic lens. And my gratitude to the editors who took the poems listed below. And, as always, abiding thanks to Jill Bialosky for her confidence and friendship.

  American Poetry Review

  “She Sells Seashells”

  Believer

  “A Little Safe”

  Bosch Bruegel Anthology

  “Unearthly Delights”

  This poem was written for a planned ekphrastic anthology edited by David Sullivan, and I thank him for the “assignment.” I dearly hope the collection will be realized.

  Boston Review online

  “A Dusting”

  Epiphany Editions Chapbook

  “The Cryptic Chamber”

  Hanging Loose

  “Afterword: The Bamboo Grove Where Various Individuals Mostly Think Aloud” (published as “The Bamboo Grove”)

  jubilat

  “Object Lessons”

  “The Old House Speaks”

  “Constant Objection”

  Kenyon Review

  “Likeness—A Self-Portrait” (published as “Brilliance: A Valentine”)

  Los Angeles Review of Books

  “Three Charms from Foreign Bodies”

  Ploughshares

  “Alloy—An Apostrophe for Isamu Noguchi”

  Plume

  “Hatchlings”

  “Divine” (published as “The Diviner”)

  Poetry

  “The Ashes”

  “Foreign Body”

  The New Yorker

  “After Being Asked if I Write the Occasional Poem”

  Quarternote Chapbook series, Sarabande Books

  “Sparkly Things” (published as “Father’s Nest”)

  The Kiss anthology (WWN, 2018)

  “Another Poem for Maude” (published as “For Maude”)

  The Yale Review

  “The Nest in Winter”

  Dedication

  When asked, “What does it look like to be an artist?” I said, “My father came home after teaching middle school, ate an early dinner, turned on the tv in the living room, set up his card table, and painted.”

  in memory of my father

  ALSO BY KIMIKO HAHN

  Brain Fever

  Toxic Flora

  The Narrow Road to the Interior

  The Artist’s Daughter

  Mosquito and Ant

  The Unbearable Heart

  Volatile

  Earshot

  Air Pocket

  Copyright © 2020 by Kimiko Hahn

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

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  Jacket design: Yang Kim

  Jacket photograph ©

  Rosamond Purcell, 2009

  Image detail: Cropped section of original photograph by Rosamond Purcell. Panel from the Chevalier Jackson Collection at the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

  Book design by JAM Design

  Production manager: Beth Steidle

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Hahn, Kimiko, 1955– author.

  Title: Foreign bodies : poems / Kimiko Hahn.

  Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019045939 | ISBN 9781324005216 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781324005223 (epub)

  Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

  Classification: LCC PS3558.A32357 F67 2020 | DDC 811/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019045939

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