Amanda Calderon, 'Werewolf On The Moon'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Werewolf on the Moon

You want to touch big animals,
animals not touched by your peers
Woe is not you

You have the polar bear in Franz
Josef Land, the white whale in the Sea
of Okhotsk,

You have the brown bear, leopard
& Amur tiger in Ussuri, the Far
East, so east, like a talon

it hooks Heilongjiang, claims
that edge of Pacific, that swath of
maritime lands & a maritime state — 

Primorsky Krai, home
to Vladivostok, the ancient Manchurian
forest, its corresponding duck,

a short North Korean river-
border changing course, redrawn
when the bank sloughs off,

its markers slipping, washing
away — Tumen, sputtering
into the Sea of Japan

There is an awareness of islands — 
Oshima, Okushiri, Hokkaido — 
tucked into the brain of every organism

Volcanics, large to small,
they perforate the waters northeast
to Kamchatka (& that is so far

your countrymen send
their misbehaved children
to so-called corners in their houses)

( Perhaps you can stand... )

By Amanda Calderon