To Where I Shall Return

Chika Sagawa was a poet recommended to me by Andrew Campana. So when I was researching the word that I wanted to use as a title for this poem, I was excited to see there was a prompt for this word made by a college student working in Japanese poetry named Andrew. I was then shocked to discover it was a different Andrew. It will never be spoken of again.

Kefukaero is the Japanese version of the Cuckoo call, as well as a classical Japanese phrase meaning ​ "to where shall I return" or "will I come home."

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Kefukaero, Kefukaero
Adam Stone

The sky is a balcony nobody sits in
The ground is general admission seats for the ocean

In the morning when the shore
retreats from the orchestra pit and the moon
exhausted from seeing himself in every show
fades out of the auditorium
I throw the rotten scraps of my laughter at the seagulls

The waves in their finest crests
slap their hands on the stage

I go home
not even turning to watch the actors grow
fat on all my excised joy