BRYNN SAITO on

Kimiko Hahn
Things that are Full of Pleasure

Finally I have a dress that resembles my mother's except for the
buttons. It is a lamby dress: grayish white and furry like wool. A
waist. Three buttons down the front, mine in red, and hers-black
with red in each center. She has tied a red ribbon around my
ponytail also. I love her. I love that we look the same. Am I four?

My grandfather in Wisconsin teaches me how to dog-paddle. The
bottom of the lake is soft.

pine, leaves, rose, hedges, stem

Dad shows me how to wind wire around tiny pine tree branches. It
is five years old but only a few inches tall. We collect new moss to
cover the roots.

The smell of hibiscus. gardenia. I think of my grandmother.
I think of mango trees.

My first husband speaking street Spanish.

My second husband taking my hand and guiding me out of the
rough waves I had gotten myself into. Once on the beach, the hot
air. The hot towel.

My third husband.
​
My daughters, home before midnight and in their beds. They each
come in quietly, and kiss me goodnight. I tell them: sticks feathers
string mud. They understand.

Brynn Saito is the author of two books of poetry, Power Made Us Swoon (2016) and The Palace of Contemplating Departure (2013), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award from Red Hen Press and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She’s the curator of an online project and chapbook, Dear--, and she co-authored, with Traci Brimhall, the poetry chapbooks, Bright Power, Dark Peace (Diode Editions, 2016) and Wild Recovery, published in Four Quartets: Poetry in the Pandemic (Tupelo Press, 2020). Brynn is an assistant professor of Creative Writing in the English Department at California State University, Fresno, located on the traditional lands of the Yokuts and Mono Peoples. Under a Future Sky, her third book of poems, will be published in August 2023. Along with Brandon Shimoda, Brynn is coediting the first-ever anthology of Japanese American/Nikkei poets, forthcoming from Haymarket Books in 2025.