Hoshigaki

Hoshigaki

Michael Shiaw-Tian Liaw

I’ve tried years ago in my studio:
one bead-curtain string of persimmons hung
unpeeled, ripening in the winter sun.
Impervious to water loss and sealed
against gnats, the fruits glowed translucent brown,
syrup of patience and maturity.
First time, too, was this unaccompanied,
unfurnished life and in new friends I found
loneliness, our cigarettes’ ember ends
a constellation of fireflies against
dusk, the encroaching universe, and angst.
The fruits rotted and fell, my ignorance
splattering on impact and opening
supernovas and the approach of spring.

---

The stemless ones we separate;
let ripen on the window sill. The others,

still hard-fisted, are peeled, one tied
to the ends of each twine, slung over a

drying rack in pairs. This is news.
From tasks we take turns at, we fugue

two large crates full of persimmons
into musical notes, orange bells,

or a mobile of captured planets.
We orbit this temple of young,

flung stars, our fingers astringent
and sore. We talk and work. You take

the peels home for compost. I keep
the skinned hearts sunlit. Between us,

we must have strung more than a hundred
ways to pass winter.

---

A week later, gone are the orange
first blush of air-shocked flesh.
Turned leather, the new skin

pulls itself together, braces
against loss. Some break,
cleft at the stems, the sweeter hearts

that the knot couldn’t keep
up, held on as hope-
deferred-no-longer. Some wound to

spilt sap and clear lava.
For the fruit flies, kombucha
in a jar that they drown in.

Daily, each one is massaged
for even ripeness, no hurry
the world hasn’t everlasted before,

though against more loss
no guarantee what might last
us past winter.

---

What was plump
now droops a long exhale, sunken
cheeks, a shriveled star. From the stem,
it browns and darkens; like ember,

the orange tip smolder of last light.
They suffer no give. What drops –
even the mature go – survive to return
for the vigil, emaciated and regirded.

The first frost is no death, sugar
crystals that mantle everyone ashen,
comets burning up, the falling
we wish upon.

---

Winter has taken

of each fruit

but the essentials

Of what remains

the heart of the matter

is jam or caramel

or failed sour sponge

slivers we sample

of irretrievable lives

what ended

well to share

our halves

and ends of winter.

---

Michael Shiaw-Tian Liaw
Poet & Support Worker

Michael's work has appeared in Witness Magazine, Zócalo Public Square, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Whittier, California, and is starting a group home to help young adult men with independent living skills.

Photography by Ann Danilina