W. Todd Kaneko is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (Curbside Splendor 2014) and co-author of Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic 2018). His poems and prose have appeared in The Normal School, Barrelhouse, the Collagist, NANO Fiction, and many other journals and anthologies. A Kundiman fellow, he is Co-Editor and Poetry Editor of Waxwing and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan where he teaches at Grand Valley State University.
***
ENTER SANDMAN
after Metallica
Pinch of dust
in the emaciated light,
like dusky fog settling quiet
from closet to bedpost.
A child’s prayer,
wish for safety, so useless
when without death
all we can think about is death.
Compare the eye
to the teeth, the fist
to the sun hovering
over the horizon—
everything must close
when that flutter of wings
announces it’s time to enter
that space where your ghosts
hunger for memory,
your ancestors gathered
into a forest of statues,
a dreamscape of rubble.
Hush, little baby—don’t say
anything about the way
the world looks more menacing
with your eyes squeezed tight.
Say there is no such thing
as fear, no such thing as sin—
if only there were some
safe place we could go.
