Five Poems From Andrea Kato

Mexico Is Underwater

We told you we'd make you brown rice
toast with a single green olive while you
sat outside a Burger King, on those

disgusting plastic chairs. You also
asked for hot sake. We forgot
both, I'm sorry. You played a game

with pomegranate seeds because
you had no dimes. They looked
like rubies before they broke.

Half underwater, I began
reading a green folder
with a secret message from

Mexico. He wrote that when
his enemy entered the room,
his particles blended with

those of his bed, and then the
floorboards, and then hell.
The tree in the picture

frame above the bed turned
orange, and caught fire.
I am always so jealous. I

knock at your door a bunch
of times, and no one answers.
I open the door and see half-

empty yellow beer bottles on
the table, and a broken wine
glass in the sink. The television

is on. I think it's Jeopardy! or
the nightly news. I assume you
are not home, but then I find you

in the back room on the computer,
and I notice a bowl full of chewed
gum stuck back in the wrappers,

making little balls. I had no idea
you chewed so much gum! and
wondered if there was something

worrying you. In horror, I watch
my mother tumble down the stairs.
You try to tell me about an under

water city that is slowly being forgot
ten, and how tragic it all is and I say
the preservation of history is like

wine, and I wish you would shut up.


And Anathema

1
You call me a 'Capitalist'
and I say -

What do you mean, you
beautiful, beautiful thing?


I say -

I want to see you
bleeding & broken
in my bathtub again

like the last time I loved you.

I want to knock on your locked door
again
and ask you if you are still alive.


I say -

Do you want me to leave.

You blow bubbles underwater
and cut your perfect wrists.


I ask god if he can look through
the walls for me and tell me what
color the water is. Please,

I need to know this.
She is already an angel,
he tells me.


I wonder about the asbestos
under your sink, and if you
will ever see me standing
naked on your green rug and
if we will ever wake up to
the light coming through
your cloud curtains.

But mostly I wonder if you
will need to stop loving me.

2
My head throbs
and I dream.

My temples pound
like church bells
and I dream.

You tell me you are glad that
they did not pull out your teeth.

I am feeling it all over again.
When they stuck needles in my gums
and pulled them out. Afterwards,
I would sit in the grass in the sun,
and leave my mouth open to let the
sunlight
into my throat because I refused to
take antibiotics. I would administer
drops of green rotting meat to my
swollen mouth
and refuse to take even one tylenol.

I gave you a bottle of painkillers.
I gave you a bottle of painkillers.

3
I hear you in the mornings.
I hear you eating plastic.
I hear you eating cranberries and watermelon.
I hear you eating white & yellow
eggs &
green apples.

I groan and tell you to shut up.

4
I drink from a bottle of
your mother's gin from your
pajama drawer
and hate it.

I start crying uncontrollably
in your tree-branch arms
and tell you how lonely I am.

I never-ever wanted to leave your arms.

But you are rooted because you are a tree,
and I am not.


The Starbucks Poem

I am at a Starbucks. This Starbucks is downtown. This Starbucks is downtown and is located on Third and Santa Clara. This Starbucks is full of fat Mexicans, businessmen, and a few crazy fucks.

This Starbucks is where I live. This Starbucks has a good selection of tea. This Starbucks is a little cold.

This Starbucks has a code to its bathrooms. The code is 191415. This Starbucks has only one cute guy working here, and he is never working.

This Starbucks is a busy one, and there is a woman who might be pre-menstrual at the table in front of me. She is shopping for clothes online. I would be too embarrassed to shop for clothes online in public. In fact, I would be too embarrassed to shop for clothes online in front of myself. I would have to get myself drunk to do it probably.

I am watching a young white man and a young black woman on what appears to be a first date. I feel like I am watching some cheesy eHarmony commercial. Their names are Natalia and Lawrence. Natalia and Lawrence are fairly attractive, but boring people. I think Natalia and Lawrence will be very happy together. I think Natalia and Lawrence will have great sex. I think Natalia and Lawrence will eventually have one half-black daughter who has an inexplicable amount of self-esteem, probably just because she is half-black.

I am avoiding looking up from “Nutrition and Physical Degeneration” by Weston A. Price, who was a dentist, because there is a crazy fat guy who keeps talking to the customers, including himself. I am watching him apparently think he is a really funny guy. I am watching him jiggle in his striped polo t-shirt eating two opened bags of caramel-covered popcorn and drinking just ice-water.

I am avoiding him and putting on my mean Asian face,
in case I mess up in avoiding him.

I am glad that the fat black man left, and also glad that the Nigerian man, who looks more like an Egyptian or Moroccan man, and who made an almost inappropriate comment about my physical attractiveness did not make any further attempt to “get to know me”.

The Nigerian man comes inside, introduces himself, sits down across from me, and further attempts to “get to know me”. I am unwillingly smelling his armpits. I am unwillingly noticing that he probably has not brushed his teeth in a few weeks. They are caked in gunk. I am grossed out. I am trying to turn him off by telling him about the exciting dietary studies and adventures of Weston Price, the super dentist.

I am watching myself watching him ramble and ramble the fuck on about life and positivity and the mind and negativity and living in the now and how to be happy, which is stuff I already know about. I am watching myself realize he is crazy. I am watching myself stop smiling. I am watching myself not respond. I am watching myself subtly say: I am not interested, now please get out of my face so I can read my book.

I am having a competition with the man with the paperwork, and the old Asian man with the cell phone that rings too loudly probably because he is going deaf, and the woman on the laptop, and all the employees. I am beating their asses at who can stay at Starbucks the longest. I am beating their asses at who can write the best Starbucks poem. I am beating their asses at life.


Death

You are talking to me
like I am a dead person.
It makes me feel strange,
and inoperable.

When you pull apart
my incised skin
pluck out my ribs
like fruit
you get too close
to my heart.

I get scared
and bleed on you.

The wind is blowing
dust and exhaust
straight through me.
I sit here wondering
what you would discuss
with someone on
their death bed.

I want to blow smoke
in your drunk face.
I want to pull on your hair
and get closer to your brain.
I want no one else
to have your love.
It is too special to share.

She has a devastating mouth.
A light shines through your teeth.
Your lace fingers weave over me
at night, but I can't find your hands
in the daylight. I feel dead and wasted
like bloody flowers in a trash can.


Mixing Chemicals

I am writing right here and there
is a lightning bolt
that I want to make
into so many other shapes
I want to take your arms
and make them into a heart
that wraps around my body as the sun
crawls out of my stomach, drool falls onto
your pillow.


Andrea Jane Kato was born in the great state of California and was raised Buddhist by a gypsy-like artist mother (deceased) and a Japanese farmer who currently grows pineapples in Hawaii. She is a Capricorn, Dragon, INTJ, HSP, Atheist, singer/songwriter, abstract painter/artist, iPhone photographer who likes yoga, fasting, and smoking. She has been published in magazines such as The Blue Jew Yorker, My Favorite Bullet, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Beat, Ditch, Pomegranate, ReadThis Magazine, and Alternativereel.