A Poem by James A.H. White

Author: Poetry Editor

July 26, 2018

This week, a poem by James A.H. White.

In Japanese, It Means the End of a Branch—
___ To Alzheimer’s, I Am a Question

Drop the bonsai seeds
into the holes
of a five-point star,
pressing one
in the middle for luck.

Bossy the soil
with the spray bottle
(Sprf! Sprf!),
but give a moment
of silence for

the handle to pull back—
pressure is
a slow king. In two
months, look
for a bud cocked upward

like a hand
ready to catch the sun’s
early prayers,
& if you see one, good boy—
grow it to a tree

& trim your mother’s
hair while
reminding her (once more)
that everything
you do, you do in her name.

——

James A.H. White is a gay, first-generation Asian-American originally from England and New Zealand. Winner of an AWP Intro Journals Project award, his writing appears in Best New British & Irish Poets 2018 (selected by Maggie Smith), Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Quarterly West, and Washington Square Review, among many other publications. Author of hiku [pull], a chapbook (Porkbelly Press), he is currently working on his first full-length collection. Twitter: @jamesahwhite