Triggers by Akira Ohiso

Triggers

Triggers Akira Ohiso 2023

Bacon Level, AL

My father was a moving target. I had to learn his history in one-word answers and passing moments, instances I could count on my hands.

I could never access his inner world because he buried his war trauma in his fascination with America. Assimilation was a way out. I was a tourist in my Japanese family.

I’ve never seen tumbleweed like in the movies.

Young American, IN

Slaughterville, OK

Vacay/Conform

TOXIC MASK

U

LENITY

Bitter End, TN

Last Chance, IA

A NEW WIND TURBINE

Dad died, followed by mom four years later, mouth agape letting life out like heat escaping in winter, my father yelling for us to close the door to save oil. I remember random memories with him, things he said that continue to form the bedrock of my identity.

Eat fruit, Akira. Put socks on in winter. Take a shower at night to sleep better. His love language was his concern for our nutrition and health. He didn’t say, “I love you”; instead, he said, “the apples are sweet,” and handed me a meticulously sliced golden delicious.

Cut and Shoot, TX

Sugar Bunker, NV

Eggnog, UT

🪨🪨🪨

Waterproof, LA

神⾵

🚬

Truth or Consequence, NM

Z

M O D E R N A

ENGLISH

Beer Bottle Crossing, ID

fi

July 4th celebrations, military songs of conquest in Sousa-esque major keys belie the genocide of Manifest Destiny.

Coldplay lip-syncing to reworks is not the way forward.

Hell of Certain, KY Satan’s Kingdom, MA Burns Down, SC Half Hell, NC Hell, MI

kazoo quintet

REAL NINJA

kazoo quartet Deadhorse, AK

COLORING BREAK

Volcano, HI

I’ve always straddled the tectonic shifts of my identity.

“Who am I?” is always the central question. I acutely felt the “otherness” in my twoness. I learned that I needed to be hyper-vigilant in different social settings from one day to the next. It was self-preservation to be half myself depending on the audience in front of me.

REGGIE, REGGIE, REGGIE

Intercourse, PA

Turkey Scratch, AR

Embarrass, MN

Fries, VA

Cool, TX tekiah shevarim t’ruah

Money, MS

Her breathing is intermittent, with long pauses between breaths. The nurse tells us that hearing and touch are the last senses to go, so talking to her is comforting. My sister puts cream on her dry lips. A nurse washes her hair with a no-rinse cap.

The family tells stories of her life. We cry, laugh, and deny the void her death will leave in its wake.

Mom was always there in every way.

📹

1984

I learned to do the moonwalk at a friend’s Bar Mitzvah after seeing Michael Jackson on the Motown 25th Anniversary Special.

🩻

Tikkun Olam or bomb?

Plastic, CO

🦈

Coward, SC

A night out with male friends can sometimes trigger toxic tests to avoid intimacy, to feel the scar tissue of the internalized male gaze.

Gen X men clamber in the dark away from our fathers’ outdated masculinity like feral cats.

A man gets on the 40 Metro bus at N 105th and Aurora without paying. The bus driver says “Rides aren’t free.”

The man says “I just need a ride up the hill.”

“Rides aren’t free,” reiterates the driver.

“You can pay for a ride or you can steal a ride?

What do you want to do?”

”I want a ride up the hill.”

The bus driver closes the doors, puts his foot on the gas and says “Steal a ride.”

新 幹 線 ⼤ 爆 破

Funk, NE

Dead Woman Crossing, OK

Maybe an essence is better than the whole picture?

It allows opportunities to embed in time slips where stitch lines, scars and thresholds are crossable borders…traversals through déjà vu hinterlands.

8:20pm 3 respirations per minute. The next inhale never comes. A threshold is crossed.

Disco, WI

Poverty, KY

Hygiene, CO

x

BOOMER

Y Knockemstiff, OH

🎺

Slaughter Beach, DE

A NEW CAR

Wealthy, TX

After the Oxford High shooting, threats of violence at Whitman and Garfield. A 13-year old is arrested for making threats on social media. Outrage on local parent chat groups, the kids just go to school.

My son’s teacher said she would climb out of the classroom window to escape a school shooting.

Forget protocol, fuck shelter-in-place. Those safety measures won’t protect you. Teachers can’t protect you.

Silver Sporks