Tuesday poem #553 : Brandon Shimoda : Girl in Mirror

 

 

Sitting in front of a mirror
Last night,

I became a woman

young, but she was
middle-aged

all the stress was in her hair

She was once a dough
in a protective forest

now she was old
with saints
seasoning her wounded looks
and gray, unfamiliar head

I recognized her sadness in
the lines around my mouth

 

 

 

Brandon Shimoda is the author of several books of poetry, most recently Hydra Medusa (Nightboat Books, 2023), from which "Girl in Mirror" is an outtake. He is co-editing, with Brynn Saito, an anthology of poetry on Nikkei (Japanese American/Japanese Canadian) incarceration, which is forthcoming from Haymarket Books in 2025.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan