Yuko Minamikawa Adams

Spider

A spider strings a guitar.

Nobody strums it.

When a fly is trapped

air starts vibrating. 

NIJO Cenka

To Cat Town

We meet for the second time, you and I-

that summer day when I was still a child,

struggling in the river’s depths,

and you looked down at me

from the railing of the bridge.

Those golden eyes

I still remember.

Just as I was about to sink,

you simply rose and walked away.

When I awoke, drawn up onto the bank,

your pitch-black form

was nowhere to be found.

“Surely it was God who saved you,

a life so chosen must be cherished, mustn't it?”

My sister used to say such things,

but I knew that it was not so.

Back then, you had not chosen me.

At last, we meet again.

No whim this time;

you will take me with you, surely.

O cat-

to your land.

Tim Taylor

Leopard

Silent, motionless

it seems no more than random patterns,

shadows cast on bark by leaves.

A twitch reveals two blobs as ears;

beneath them, eyes are watching.

A blade of fear transfixes me

and yet, there is no roar, no leap

no apocalypse of teeth and claws.

The leopard yawns, not tempted

by this odd, two-legged prey.

I regain control of limbs and back away.

Secure, I can appreciate 

the beauty of that latent power,

a work of art draped lazily over a branch.

But I am not fooled: if the cat is harmless

it has already killed today.

Yasushi Ikeda

Hornet

Your eyes disgust a hornet but your dream keeps it.

Your fingers cannot grasp its wings but your heart unconsciously produces its poison.

Your hornet appears from everywhere.

It hides behind leaves, creeps inside a shoe, slips into the gap of your memory, watching your behavior, and pricks your week point.

If you are terrified of it, it becomes bigger and stronger, the sound of its wings always heard, but you cannot see it though you turn your head.

It flies between your legs, stops silently on your back, measures where your thought falls short, and tries to snipe.

Your hornet can prick you at any time.

You can never run away.

It is next to you as long as you are you, and pricks you when you hope, but pricks you even if you don't hope but a wild flower whispers you had better be pricked.

Nambara Jushi

Ten “Tankas” from “The Endless Sky”

In heavy rain my clothes got dripping wet

And clung to my body,

I ran through the devil’s shop curtains.

The boy failed to ask

Whether he should throw away all of the rotten orange 

Or part of it.

I was hit harshly

But I stood up 

Even though bleeding heavily.

Fingers pick red apples shining under the blue sky 

Kalium is emitting 

From the primary somatosensory cortex.

I, blindfolded,

Slightly feel a knife near my neck. 

The bell tolls.

The ogre with bloody eyes

Angrily bit and tore out from inside my body 

And sat as cool as a cucumber.

Out of a lot of masks hidden in the closet

I select a mask for today 

Wondering which is most appropriate.

I draw with a single stroke of the brush in the same way

The flight path of a bird which would fly in the sky 

Where I would not be in the future.

“The full moon is especially big in the night sky, isn’t it?”,

I want to ask all the people of the world both in the past and in the present.

The moon is full tonight.

The human comedy is coming out of the brain network,

What value does that secretion have 

If you don’t have pride yourself.

Yasushi Ikeda

Flood

Flood gulps the town.

All the postboxes sink.

Water pours in all of them and open all the envelopes,

Letters leave the paper and begin to swim.

People get on boats and try to fish,

But cannot catch any.

What on earth is this flood?

Blue sky's piss.

Aphasia of the town continues for three weeks.

People watch the water trying to read something,

But words swim too fast to apprehend,

And disappear before they make sense.

Some properly think drinking is listening to words,

Others wrongly believe to write is to wound the water,

All wondering if it is morning or noon or night,

The town is sleepy with time delayed and lost.

For awakening,

I jump from the balcony into the water

To post a new letter in the postbox.

Yasushi Ikeda

---ESSAY---

Air and insects

I'm now reading books about animals for the preparation of the planned special pages of the summer issue of our poetry magazine "Mi-lyre-n". One of them is "Alien Worlds: How insects conquered the earth and why their fate will determine our future" written by Steve Nicholls (via the Japanese translation by Remi Kumagai). The hugeness of 600 pages of this book testifies how large, unimaginable, complicated and mysterious insects' world is. 

One big wonder concerning insects is that they can fly. They acquired wings long before birds did. Miracle. Insects were the first to proceed in the air, and since then they have subtly developed and elaborated their wing mechanism. According to this book, the air is somewhat like water for small insects. Possibly they fly as if they swim and climb in the air. But imagine the first insect that came upon the idea of flight. Maybe it moved some parts of its body and felt the possibility of the air. Genius! 

Poetry also flies in our imaginative space. Air for insects is silence for poems. Not vacuum silence but dreamy, dense liquid silence, I fancy.

Our genuine precious inspiration is the first unidentified flying insect some hundred million years ago.

Yuko Minamikawa Adams

Giacometti in a Fridge

 

10 a.m.

the door is opened.

I step into the gallery.

I feel the air of fridge –

immaculate, intact.

Figures are standing

in this clear atmosphere.

They are thin, almost

emaciated

but still solid

like trees.

I stare at these people,

wondering

how they could cope with this chill

and silence

after visitors disappeared

last evening

and how they could wait

until this morning

when our body temperature

reheats

their space.

Turfalko

The veins of the journey

The veins of the journey

unravel into multiple

furrows

and our expectations kindle

beneath contrary forces

we are the stars

of a thousand branches

frail cracks

fractures

with golden glints

our marks

and our marblings

mineral

darkened by words

sentences

sketches

traces of time

calligrams

of our weaknesses

flaws and imperfections

thus

we write ourselves

Turfalko

Mists of dreams

Mists of dreams

or mists of heat

silence awakens us

through the shutters

mashrabiya

of shadows and light

on your skin

figures

of desire

glyphs

of our ardent wishes

carved into the body

a caress awakens our senses

a blackbird's song in the distance

and the wind in a soft whistling

carries to us the discreet delights

and the secret coolness of the palm grove