Published by Portland Monthly in Winter 2026-27. Photo by Dina Avila.
Clove and tree bark hit my nose as I enter Mia Reiko Braverman’s home, which she shares with her husband, experimental musician Luke Wyland. Briefly, the incense transports me to a cup of very spicy tea, drunk on my friend Emi’s couch in the early 2000s. I shake myself back to the present, take off my shoes, and step into Braverman’s living room, which is filled with beautiful wooden objects: a rib-like chandelier, a wicker cabinet. A black bun sits atop her head like a little nest. She wears a flowing, sand-colored linen top and loose pants the deep brown of forest duff. Her glasses, hoop earrings, and the black pearls of her necklace are all very round, and I decide that she and her home are portals to a potent earthen realm.
I’ve come to watch Braverman make incense by hand. For several years, she’s been making and selling incense sticks under the name Fumi. She’s the only Japanese-style incense maker in Portland and one of few in the Pacific Northwest. Fumi sounds like the Spanish and Portuguese “to smoke,” fumar, and even the English fume, cognates that remind me that mouths blow smoke with a “fooo.”
