PUCCINI ARIA
by Kenny Tanemura

It's the way we'd sound if the office work didn't turn
our voices into pens without ink scratching semaphores
on white snowscapes some dead author dreamt.
This one hour is a plum waiting to be picked

off a Japanese screen where Buson looks at
ice on the junipers, one word cutting 
into another, as if it couldn't be helped.
The pleasure in reading is the same as the pleasure

in the forbidden, Helene Cixous said.
And what of listening, as I listen now
to Kiri Te Kanawa sing Sole e amore, watch midnight
streetlights filter through her single voice?