Jennifer Hasegawa

THE FISHER-PRICE OF LOVE

Depending on culture
or random location,
someone might say something
comforting or touch you
in a way that denotes
that you have nothing
to worry about.

We entered
a low-slung building
and yet it had
an elevator. And so I got
to ride in one
for the first time.

When you go away,
will you come back?

We went into a room
where my mother and a man
with a deep side comb sat
facing each other.

The man said, “Go play,”
and extended an arm
toward every toy
I’d ever wanted.

Deprivation
is the mother
of invention.

One body in the airplane.
One body in the schoolhouse.
One body in the cloud
of suspicion
that is being alive.

Freefalling
while people watch
from the corners
of their eyes.

The first deception
on record.

Drawing fat lead lines
from actions
to words. There aren’t enough
words.

Do you remember
the first time you asked a
why?

The margarine tub
where we tuck
our money
is empty.
Dinner is oversalted,
yet we refuse
to throw it out,
stand over it,
raging and mourning.

Use this bargain alchemy everywhere
to transform defeats
into feasts
of devotion.

JENNIFER HASEGAWA is the author of La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living, longlisted for The Believer Book Award for Poetry. She has won the San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award, and her poetry has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bamboo Ridge, jubilat, Tule Review, and Vallum. Founder of the Kau Kau Chronicles, a website dedicated to preserving and sharing recipes from out-of-print cookbooks published by Hawai‘i community organizations in the early- to mid-20th century, she was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and lives in San Francisco.