Butsuma by Bern Mulvey

Butsuma

by Bern Mulvey

(published in his 2008 book, The Fat Sheep Everyone Wants, CSU Press)

Time to meet the relatives, only they’re dead.

It’s like a WWII newsreel, all the black-and-white,

the marugari and fukurasuzume hairstyles,

the montsuki, the formal death of kimonos, even a sword

or two. Why am I here? The mother-in-law-to-be

narrates causes of death. This one, stomach cancer,

that one, cerebral hemmorrhage. She fast-forwards

to her brother, machine-gunned t...