Rabbit Season
Rabbits scamper across gravel and grass,
dodging beneath expensive SUVs, hoping not to get
hit, and flattened out on asphalt roads like hairy pancakes sizzling in 90° F heat—
rabbit after rabbit appearing (then disappearing) to the invisible chorus of
raucous birds. “They all look the same,” the birds squawk (like Blacks or Asians
or whites), equally furtive, hairy, and clueless, waiting for the Melting Pot stew to be
flung into—carcass boiling gently into a lovely, bubbling mess of seasons,
the rabbit stew of the imagination multiplies with odd
indivisible numbers of unnamable ingredients (unlike
cumin, sassafras, lemongrass, coriander, anise, marjoram, saffron, pepper…)
What else can we use to season a rabbit in rabbit season?
Rabbits in the Paradise (RIP)
of the Melting Pot stew of the odd imagination.
Author of two full-length poetry collections and four poetry chapbooks, Hiromi Yoshida is a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Poetry Prize, and a semifinalist for the Gerald Cable Book Award. She is the Poetry Editor of Flying Island Journal, and serves on the board of directors for the Writers Guild at Bloomington, while coordinating the Guild’s Last Sunday Poetry reading series. Her latest poetry book is Green Roses Bloom for Icarus (Roadside Press, 2024).
