October 3, 2015

One Poem By Hiromi Yoshida: "Lazarus, Bloomington IN (July 2000)"




Hiromi Yoshida has won multiple Indiana University Writers' Conference awards. Her poems have appeared in Flying Island, Evergreen Review, Bathtub Gin; The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society, and the Matrix anthologies of literary and visual arts.  Hiromi loves to browse the vintage apparel section of Cactus Flower in Bloomington, Indiana.










Lazarus, Bloomington IN (July 2000)




Her eyes glinted hard blue bits
of Indiana summer sky
as she aggressively combed the circular clearance
rack—round and round the
numbers spun by us—25%  50%  75% off


original prices—major markdown to the vanishing point of infinitesimal decimal places
growing gargantuan greed like green moss and decimated daisies in the daily crevices of


the consumerist American dream
promising us biggest bargains and extremely slashed
item prices.


Plastic sales tags swung in the interstices indicating size demarcations [XS, S, M, L, XL]—I struggled to
freeze the spinning rack at XS/S—she resisted in the opposite circular
direction toward L/XL—endless tug-of-war—hangers scraping hideously discordant concertos—a carousel of ghastly color and dubiously synthetic fabric—flimsily stitched-together
garments hanging


askew, forlorn like the skins of baggy ghosts flapping and begging
to be inhabited immediately—to be purchased at 75% off and stuffed into plastic
shopping bags with neatly stapled return receipts—to lie once again
forgotten in our overstuffed, oversized suburban closets spewing out a predictable barrage of garage sales in the backyards of Bloomington, Indiana—Lazarus resurrected endlessly.

~Hiromi Yoshida

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