The Museum of Small Bones

"I longed to become / a jellyfish, Miho Nonaka writes, so transparent no one / could tell my body / from the water I swim in . . . The self wants both to emerge and to hide, to disappear and to be known. Who could have taught me to stay at home in my own body, she asks, all the while I traveled from one country to another . . . ? Nonaka's position as a citizen of two cultures and many cities, one who is either always outside or else at home everywhere, allows her poems to turn language, body, gender and world like faceted gems, looking into their depths with irony, sorrow, and the endless curiosity voiced here by both poet and silkworm: How is it that I am here? Where does this appetite lead, if hunger points beyond its immediate end?" -- Mark Doty