Sky Country

A Paterson Poetry Prize finalist On The Brooklyn Rail’s Best Books of 2017 Christine Kitano’s second poetry collection elicits a sense of hunger—an intense longing for home and an ache for human connection. Channeling both real and imagined immigration experiences of her own family—her grandmothers, who fled Korea and Japan; and her father, a Japanese American who was incarcerated during WWII—Kitano’s ambitious poetry speaks for those who have been historically silenced and displaced. “Persimmons” My mother calls them gahm,savoring the round vowel. When she pares off the skins,They fall away like strips of ribbon. Clusters of firm, waxy planetsslung low on a strained branch, the tree a sudden stab of coloron the drab East L.A. corner. The box arrives in fall, whitepostal service cardboard wet in the corners where the fruitshave already spilled their juice. Faced with the open box, I thinkmy mother’s word, but aloud exclaim “persimmons.” Persimmons,the word in the only language I own.