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Jamaica
by Mark Osaki
(11/25/09)
It was when you said my breath
had become salty that we laughed,
tongues exhausted from the last tidal swell,
and saw the whole island still quavering
under the moon's stiffened light.
I am becoming your seal, you said,
grinning. A pure obsession nailed
to tissue and fin as water hammered
in wave by shaken spray, lapping
wetness on an emerging skin.
Your belly full of headless fish,
the foam glistening on your lips,
your face diving into me so cold and
lovely to touch, a flat black mammal
swimming into meat.
©2009 by Mark Osaki
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Mark Osaki's work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including: The Georgia Review, Carrying the Darkness—The Poetry of the Vietnam War (Avon, Texas Tech University Press), South Carolina Review, Men of Our Time—An Anthology of Male Poetry in Contemporary America (University of Georgia Press), Breaking Silence—An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets (Greenfield Review Press), Onset Review, and Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac (National Public Radio).
He has received awards for his poetry from the Academy of American Poets, University of California at Berkeley, San Francisco Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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