Performing Patience

In Japanese, the word gaman means, “enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity.”

For China Miéville

Out of wood, shellac, paint
in Minidoka, Matsumoto makes
a daughter in the box:

faces and two empty squares
an escape clause his children
study their backs toward

the no-fly zone window
hung around
the immutable Idaho sky

arrange evasions sliding
blue in four minds
people meeting people they knew.