Feature Poet: Richard Oyama

Good morning! Today's featured poet is Richard Oyama! Check out his poem below!

This is just to tell you

Of the thousand candles in your lightless flat on the avenues

And our shower and your fleshless ribs

like jesus and your incipient breasts

and the ritual of the massage but

this was out where it was fogbound and it went

nowhere no you could not take it serious

you who Takamine called a choice cut you were

that but were sleeping with someone else

polyamorous a term not in common usage tho

open was. I knew none of this. No you could

not take it serious and

this is just to let you know that

the yellow roses in the icebox

are rotting

Richard Oyama’s poems, stories and essays have appeared in Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry, The Nuyorasian Anthology, Breaking Silence, Dissident Song, A Gift of Tongues, About Place, Konch Magazine, Pirene’s Fountain, Tribes, Malpais Review, Anak Sastra, Buddhist Poetry Review and other literary journals. The Country They Know (Neuma Books 2005) is his first collection of poetry. He has a M.A. in English: Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Currently retired, Oyama taught at California College of Arts in Oakland, University of California at Berkeley and University of New Mexico.