"Moji," by Lance Larsen

[elsabeta.livejournal.com]

I like it, this moji, this pen name, this crayon
signifier coined by my three-year-old,
who signs his scribbles like a dyslexic angel.
I like it for its mojo, which voodoo scribes
breathe in and cranky blues divas
belt out. For the way it marries Mo and Genji,
as if the Three Stooges had fallen
from another weekend pie fight into the plush
ritual of a tenth-century Japanese court.
For the way it burns like mojave when I say it,
but ends with a three-story i, a Giacometti
stick figure posing as guardian
or lighthouse. For the way its four letters,
sometimes transposed as jimo or ojim,
float from one crayon hex to the next,
anchoring only where my son wants them to,
to his name, to Happy Halloween, to alien
cats with beards diving into a sleeping green sun.


Lance Larsen
New England Review
(Volume 20, Number 4, Fall 1999)