Excerpt from shima by Shō Yamagushiku

March 26, 2024

Excerpt from shima by Shō Yamagushiku. Copyright © 2024 Shō Yamagushiku.

Published by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

Shō Yamagushiku. shima. McClelland & Stewart. $22.50, 96 pp., ISBN: 9780771010927

 I greet my uncle at the harvest festival.

  He turns his back.

The village spreads itself for

  the feverish water dream.

The forest blossoms with my failures.

   I am ravenous

 for a golden tradition. I am brimming

  with fangs and mandates.

My eyes are cameras. My feet are

  clubs. The village

is suspended above the water. I am

  stroking its underbelly.

I am stealing glances at my

  own grave.

I am forcing my body inside a

  closed ritual. I am

prying at everything that resembles

  a hinge or a door. I am

squeezing a child’s throat, demanding

  to know why my language

has no name.

 I am breaking over an elder’s

  head. I am

waking in a living room

  my hands roving

past the family altar.

   I am glimpsing the emperor’s

smile in a villager’s tired face.

  I am swallowing

whole offerings of fruit

  meant for the gods.

 I am picking flesh from my teeth.

   The village is tilting

on its axis. It is turning.

  All its organs are

spilling across the bay.

  I am taking the sharpest stick

and poking the root

  ancestor. I am

insisting that if he awakens

  I will have something

useful to say.

Photo credit: Victor Silva

Shō Yamagushiku is an independent writer and researcher. He writes from the homelands of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples (Victoria, BC). shima is his first poetry collection.