Red Barns by Kenjiro Nomura
The red barns’ roofs are slanted,
curved and guttered for rain.
On shingles and roadways shadows form,
soon the barometer drops, the rain erupts
from the heavens. The mountain blue
is the Columbia shade of my father’s
eyes and cinnabar’s a barn’s red tinge.
From pastures of plenty great barns
were raised to store bounties of hay,
grain, green-red apples in barrels,
weighed by the bushel and pound.
Overhead in Kenjiro Nomura’s
Red Barns, grey clouds hang
like udders, bearing, the caption
asks, the weight of incarceration.
Artists and writers have adventured here
from old worlds to fashion visions
on canvas and page. We are intoxicated
by the technicolored splendor of sage,
our American West. Captions posted clear
in monochrome to the artwork’s right
do not reveal the sparkle of a father’s
smile or witch hazel held
in the aftershock of a mother’s
last embrace. But the people, I ponder,
as I shift focus back to Red Barns
are absent from Nomura’s majestic scene.
Shipped to Minidoka Relocation Camp
in Idaho, the caption reprises, interned
behind barbed wire. Have you never heard
of Executive Order 9066, a popular policy
scripted by FDR, the caption poses?
The silo’s high triangle is crowned in gold.
August Singing
My father liked
to carry a watering can
he poured water
on sweet pea, roses
and hydrangeas
I liked to follow him
he positioned the can
and nodded. I turned
the faucet on
then looked for him
I liked father’s quiet
ways, his blue
eyes falling through
August sunlight
The days are failing
he sighed
I knew this through
and through, school
a fortnight’s measure
evaporating like dew
It is but little to say
but father
I sit in my kitchen
singing.
Eamonn Wall is a native of Co. Wexford, who lives nowadays in St. Louis. Recent publications have included Conocimiento: Writing Irish Borderlands (Peter Lang, 2025) and My Aunts at Twilight Poker (Salmon Poetry, 2023). His poetry and prose have been published in The Irish Times, The Prairie Schooner, The Cafe Review, Innisfree, and other publications.
Innisfree 43
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