Second Generation Once Removed

Here is a man with his teeth sucked in
and space in his skin where eyes should reside.

He breathes through a hole where a question
once was. Now his thought turns inward.

The answer he seeks is a long blue-grey
cold day billboard riding the side of a bus

in the language of a distant land
he's known since he was young.

His grandfather waded through rice fields
of Uonuma, terraced slender green blades

glowing row upon row to the soft rise of mountains
around his farm. He never knelt at his grandfather's table.