What are these spirits that inhabit our bodies trying to tell us?
—Kazuo Ohno, Butoh dancer
Ghost clown in drag,
skin greased white, sheds
his mother’s kimono,
swims sinuous limbs
in glacial striptease,
mouth a red river,
nonagenarian hands
conducting isotopes,
body a spectral
tango, a shivering
amphibian, blown
toward footlights
of the millennium,
as he throws roses
back into the ocean of us.
