Kamikaze, That Divine Wind
by Maj Ragain



reading by James Scofield


reading by John Wright

My mother is dissolving like an Alka-Seltzer   
in the warm water of this Indian Summer,
the white crown of her head
unraveling hair by hair,
flung outward toward the Crab nebula, the fiery 
burrow from which we came.


The carbon in these chains that
bind flesh to spirit was
born in that hot galactic heart.
The big fizz is still expanding.

My mother’s life is now a small bang, a hushed
dissolution, what the white coats have named
anxiety attacks, her little apartment abuzz
with swarms of tiny Kamikaze planes, the pilots
drunk on sake and crazed devotion, diving at
her little boat paddling the burning oil slick.
I can’t see them. She can. I know they are there.

The glass jar shatters on the sidewalk.
The fire flies mill about, then gather toward home.

Gather and Fizz, Fizz and Gather
oil on canvas
81 x 12”
2018
Private Collection

Maj Ragain. Clouds Pile Up in the North: New & Selected Poem Press 53, LLC, Winston-Salem, NC, 2017 p. 135

Damen, Jessica & Ragain, Maj, Home To Sargasso Sea-A Long Journey of Loving Collaboration, exhibition catalog, June 1-July 14, 2018, KSU Downtown Gallery, Kent OH, Kent State University School of Art Collection and Galleries and the Wick Poetry Center with support from the Ohio Arts Council. pp 42-43

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