Fifty-some years after the war, a kamikaze lands in my yard,
gently, like a sheet of newsprint.

“Ohayo gozaimasu,” I say, though it is evening, light grown ochre
and pink, day disappearing across the Zero's wings.

He shinnies from the cockpit, the thinnest man I've seen.
He has evaded the radar. He's fallen

for decades, believing he'll attack
the coast of America, setting all the pines in Oregon blazing.

I take him inside, where he drinks a glass of water.
It is clear. It tastes nothing like the ocean.


(originally appeared in No Accident)

Aaron Anstett's collections are Sustenance, No Accident, and Each Place the Body's. More recently, his work appears or is forthcoming in Fence, KNOCK, OH NO, and others. He lived in many parts of Wisconsin many years ago but now lives in Colorado with his wife, Lesley, and children.