The Rabbit in the Moon, and: Collecting White Radish, and: The Calligrapher

The Rabbit in the Moon · Tomi Nagai With company, you are small feet, shadow fingers pushing through the papered door. Yuichi and Yuka lock you in the kitchen kissing you through the window. The print of their lips is still on the glass. You test yourself with ghosts: your brother is the floating, legless woman black hair covering the white face, with a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth. And you screaming squeezing your sister. Your mother gives you a small cup of rice for the Buddhist altar in Papa's study. Mama is afraid of it: Grandma, the photographs, incense just below light, and in the alcove— the glowing eyes of statues. When you hang two half-moons and run to the toilet your mother leans back from the kotatsu scolding you gently. Her head falls from side to side. Be careful Papa will lock you in the storehouse— He pinches, pushes you in. —Not the heavy door but the old things that make it dark: the black ink that smells like saliva, Grandpa's winter kimono, clay seed jars, Papa's mildewed gloves. Press your face against the wood. Doorcry. They leave you in too long. 52 ¦ The Missouri Review Everyone you draw has your father's face. It lines your hand. But there's no face in the moon here: it is a rabbit pounding rice cakes, white circles, into which you press your hand. And before bed, stories of a boy born from a peach who sleeps between his parents, like you and Yuichi, and goes off to slay an island of ogres. Late at night your father carries you into the bathroom, asleep and holds you over the toilet. "sss," he says "sssss ssssss . . ." Collecting White Radish · Tomi Nagai We stand over them in a muddy field, the even swaying and pulling— suction on this long white root: what it takes to make the earth release its slender teeth what the old people say has kept them alive this long —An old man tells us in Korean then Japanese about wet clay here, and its radishes like white porcelain coming up in the field, how to slip them out how snapping one is bad luck. The Missouri Review · 53 Couples from the city in tight-fitting clothes brought with them from Hong Kong or Taiwan, children in rainboots after bakchoi, hakusai nappa daikon. And mukashi, mukashi long, long ago once upon a time when hundreds of pounds swung into carts for women scrubbing the children and the radishes by the stream they were stretched on the wooden floors to dry. Grandma nudged them around for an hour before deciding to go ahead with it— added red pepper and vinegar, turning them yellow slowly. In each jar, part of next year. Falltaste. Latenight conversation already stored on the basement shelf. Late in the afternoon Uncle George cuts half-circles, arranges them on a long board in the west window spread flat, or leaning to a point like firearms or a ribcage. They dry into box lunches Grandpa ate once, by his field in Yamanashi. 54 · The Missouri Review Tomi Nagai The Calligrapher · Tomi Nagai Everywhere in his house you feel a hand's motion, names moving across the wall. The calligrapher leaves small weights in each room—a bronze deer, a sword hilt, round stones. He licks and softens his brush. On the inkstone, the stick circles counterclockwise to settle the Shinto spirits: they listen for rubbing, the smell of soil. The water darkens a few words at a time. The mulberry paper absorbing smoke, archipelagos. The calligrapher kneels, edging back over a scroll—the weight of smooth flat stones. He moves across the page of a book trailing water, rice, trees. Toward evening, only dark figures moving on paper. The brush is gone, the calligrapher isn't visible. Wet tracings. Smell of islands. The Missouri Review ¦ 55 ...