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The Summer on Board & Other Poems
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The Summer on Board
Suddenly chased by thunderclouds. The early summer café we fled to.
The River Thames beyond the forest, somehow it smelled of tide. Moist atmospheric air and the great old stream. There are no boundaries of the water.
Taps of rain on the river. Footsteps on a graveled path. Walking on the flow. Laughing with time.
Eternal adventures. Farewells echo. The sky in blue forever would never be night ever.
CARPE DIEM
A heatproof glass dish fell out of the microwave, it cracked and flowered.
Happy Birthday!
I have no way of knowing who you are or when you were born, though.
The cluttered kitchen floor is a kaleidoscope spinning at the same speed as a 78 rpm record. Petticoats of coloured glass shards sparkle and dance a waltz.
Carpe diem.
Pluck the day.
Lying Lemons
bear,
bear,
bear,
bear,
bear,
bear,
bear,
The belly button marks time.
Meals inside the hunted furs.
Scent of life splashed with lemon juice.
A momentary lie passes on the bullet train.
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images: hiromi suzuki
Note: The Summer on Board, CARPE DIEM, Lying Lemons are parts of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1). The poems written in Japanese have been translated by hiromi suzuki, 2023.
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The Summer on Board & Other Poems / Hiromi Suzuki
© poetry by hiromi suzuki, 2023
published in RIC Journal (June 25, 2023)
via RIC Journal
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Lycoris Radiata
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One chilly winter morning, the body of a young woman was removed from a hilltop hotel. The hotel, built in 1937, was in the student quarter, Kanda Surugadai Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, known as Quartier Latin of Japan, which retained its classical Art Déco interior and exterior. The short hair of the corpse, that had been dyed in gold and wrapped in a white sheet, was wearing a scarlet feather headband. It was an unusually snowy morning. A bellboy carrying a poodle saw off the stretcher carried by the emergency team. The dog, having lost its owner, was shivering from cold and grief. A young man, a student at an art university, was in a café on the ground floor of the hotel, looking out the window at the white city, holding a cup of coffee. He heard the siren of an ambulance carrying a dead body and a scream squeezed out of a fluffy white ball of wool held by a bellhop.
“Who will take in that poodle?” He asked the waitress who brought Kalita’s coffee server and a ham and cheese croque-monsieur to his table.
“The hotel manager will take care of the dog. The woman wearing the red feather headband was originally the manager’s mistress. Would you like some more coffee?”
Before he could reply, the waitress poured coffee into his cup and slipped the bill under his plate.
A cloudy sky
A smudged orange
In lemon green
Lime yellow
The spikes on the stem
Of the Tahiti lime
The acidity of the juice
Strangling my throat
Suddenly, he heard a colourful old song in the breeze, sent by the fan spinning on the ceiling. “How do I get to the store called Lemon Art Supply? I need to buy some tubes of watercolour paint”, he asked the waitress. “Down this hill, on the corner to the left of the playground”, she answered. “Will there be snow on the ground in the park till this afternoon? I want to make a snowman when I get off work: A girl with a red feather headband.” She laughed innocently.
Withering vines are coiling about the now closed theater and signs of autumn are creeping into the wasteland. The vapor blows up from the culvert of the underground. The sunshine remains to cast idle warmth and dull light on the bushes. Flowers of Lycoris Radiata are stuck in a cul-de-sac. They are hearing the footsteps of winter. Lycoris Radiata seems to be a young lady, just started blooming in red. She laughs at her diamond tooth as she examines her face in the backstage cracked mirror. A stray dog digs up the ashes, remains from the burning branches of trees and weeds of the summer months. The dusty ashes fly in the air, exposing the wet soil. The dog continues digging in the soil with his paws. He is looking for leftovers from the diner years ago, which he had hidden at the roots of a pine tree. Eventually, he will give up. Hungry and thirsty, the stray dog barks at the gaping hole.
“Give me a cup of coffee!  If only one wish could come true, give me some fried chicken! I do not care about the flesh! Bones and a shattered husk of a soul!”
Lycoris Radiata, in an unladylike manner, laughs so hard that she drops her false tooth to the bottom of the hole. The body of the beast and the diamond tooth must be buried in the season, along with the husk of their souls, and washed away into the groundwater.
Before becoming acquainted with the cremation procession known today, Japanese people used the Lycoris Radiata flower in funeral processions. Japanese people plant Lycoris Radiata around food in the hope that the flowers will deter wild animals from preying on recently buried human bodies. This is where the flower associated with death got its name.*
The young woman wearing the scarlet feather headband was a very beautiful dancer. Her death was caused by an overdose of tramadol. The hotel maid cleared out the articles of the deceased. In the closet were colourfully stowed away flapper dresses decorated with gorgeous fringes and beads for dancing the Charleston. On the table, room service Peach Melba was melting, leaving only the bones on a plate of chicken steak for the poodle. The bells of the Orthodox Church high on the hill, rang. Below the hotel was a valley, and the Kanda-River was filled with abundant water. The snow would have eventually turned into rain and flowed into the river. The art student exited the café through a bronze door fitted with geometric stained glass and felt the cold rain on his cheeks. As he descended the hill, he pictured the ocean on a paper pad of Arches Aquarelle in his arms. The Kanda-River flowed through the town to Tokyo Bay, and then to the Pacific Ocean.
The Greeks believed that all the waters of the world were connected, so Naiads had the ability to travel anywhere water was found. Unlike most nature gods, some Naiads made their homes near civilization and even in the middle of cities. The wells and springs that provided fresh drinking water to humans were often the homes of, and gifts of, the water goddesses.**
A performance by The Savoy Havana Band can be faintly heard from the orchestra pit of the closed theatre. No, it could be the sound from portable radio tuned on a programme of swing jazz. An unclear broadcast because of the noise, buried in a hole at the roots of pine tree by the stray dog. Yes. It must be the music of the groundwater streaming forever. The flowers of Lycoris Radiata sway in the wind.
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photography: hiromi suzuki
Notes:
*Lycoris Radiata, Beautiful Red Flowers That Aren’t as Pretty as Their Meaning
https://www.floweradvisor.com/blog/lycoris-radiata/
**The Naiads, The Nymphs of Fresh Water
In Greek mythology, Lycorias was the Nereid, one of the fifty marine-nymph daughters of ‘Old Man of the Sea’ Nereus and the Oceanid Doris.
https://mythologysource.com/naiads-greek-nymph/
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Lycoris Radiata – A Short Story by hiromi suzuki  
© short story by hiromi suzuki, 2023
published in IceFloe Press (June 4, 2023)
via CASSANDRA/CHORALE – A Subterraean Chatter Project
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Late Blooming Girl
Uncle Beard had no teeth, I was thinking. First of all, the reason he was called Uncle Beard was quite simple: he had a long white beard growing under his chin. The reason he was thought to be toothless was that he clucked his tongue like small drops of sudden rain hitting the roof, no matter what he ate. Uncle Beard, who was an elder brother of my grandma, ran a shoe shop on the edge of Tokyo. I was set to transfer to a new primary school that autumn and my grandma took me to the shop to have the school-designed one strap low heel shoes, pretty shoes so-called Mary Jane in the 1930s, made. Lovely leather shoes strolling could been seen through the display window, Oxfords, Derbys, marshmallow heel pumps, lace-up ankle boots, and knee-high boots. Even the flat shoes with corsages made by suede for little girls pretended to be prima donnas. In a faded poster of the 1966 tune These Boots Are Made for Walkin’, Nancy Sinatra laid sexy, holding Spotted Python to her breast. Uncle Beard showed me a leather sample book. There were a variety of animals, including cows, pigs, deer, etc. and even reptiles such as crocodiles and snakes. True or not, Uncle Beard told us proudly and exaggeratedly that once a year he went to the Amazon River and Río Orinoco to catch crocodiles. “Lunch is a crocodile dish,” Grandma called everyone from the main house at the back of the shop. On the kitchen table were dishes of chicken and white fish, which appeared to be cod, fried in used rapeseed oil. The plate was garnished with tartar sauce and cut lemon, with pickled olives and plastering a heap of French fries. I had lost my appetite.
Late that afternoon, Uncle Beard took me to a summer festival in the shopping district. Food booths lined the front of each shop in the arcade, I begged for grilled corn due to the temptation by the savoury aroma of soy sauce. We sat on a container of chilled bottled beer and nibbled on a whole corn together. I gazed at Uncle Beard’s mouth from motives of curiosity. When he opened his thin lips inside the bush of his long white beard, a reddish-black tongue glimpsed like a snake through the dark hole leading to his larynx. Then the teeth, which should not be there, especially the big front teeth, dropped the corn grains into his mouth like a bulldozer scraping sediment from a bedrock. The corn cores remained after being ground and eaten up by only his tongue rolled aimlessly away, lost in the footsteps of the festival crowd. ‘Do you want some watermelon?’ Uncle Beard said impatiently and brought two slices of watermelon out of eight equal portions into each hand, from the next booth. The droplets from the surface of watermelon, which had cooled in the icebox, evaporated in the heat of the pavement. I tried again to observe Uncle Beard, but his watermelon quickly disappeared into his long white beard. From a black hole, which might be his mouth, black seeds as small beetles jumped out vigorously one after another and died on the burnt pavement. The juice of watermelon spilled from his relax tongue stained his dry beard a pale pink.
There was a lottery at the exit of the shopping arcade. The Japanese lottery machine was a hexagonal rotating wooden box with plastic balls of about one centimetre in radius in various colours, red, blue, green, white, yellow, etc. The bettor turned a handle on the outside and the prize was determined by the colour of ball out. The first prize of the winner was a one-night trip for a couple to the hot-spring hotel in Hakone. “I hope we win the Fujiya Ryokan, where John & Yoko and Yukio Mishima used to stay,” said Uncle Beard dreamily as he stood in the queue. When it was our turn and I turned the handle of the machine in exchange for a redemption ticket, a white ball rolled out. The prize was a Hello Kitty perfume bottle-style keyring. The madam of the cosmetics shops in charge of the lottery said, “Congratulations, Kitty! you are lucky!” she smiled, hooked a ball chain on the tip of her glittery manicured forefinger and popped Hello Kitty into the palm of my hand. The liquid was noticed to be just water, coloured pink. Madame winked at Uncle Beard with her eyelashes like the wings of a swallowtail butterfly. “You should buy this girl a real perfume. Eau de Parfum named Ever Bloom would suit her. As you know, I work at a distributor of Shiseido Company. The shop is on the ground floor of the building on the corner back down this street. The next door of a book café. Do not forget!”
Even as the seasons passed, I could not adjust to my new primary school. I was a late-blooming girl who never pursued love or dreams. But I fell in love with a dreaming boy in my dream. I could only see his back in the distance. As I woke up from my dream, I was crying hugged the afterimage of his smile. I was listening to These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ on my pillow while eating an apple. Outside the window it was snowing. I thought of sexy alligator-skin boots strutting around town like a Nancy Sinatra song. I remembered the cute boy in the same class as me in the previous school. Although I had forgotten about the Hello Kitty keyring I won as prize on the day of the summer festival, and Eau de Parfum which Uncle Beard bought me. Even the scent of Ever Bloom might have remained in the back of my desk drawer, I cannot remember. I wondered if the truth or not that Uncle Beard was planning an adventure capturing black caiman and Orinoco crocodiles in Venezuela again next summer holidays. Above all, I could never forget the horrible scene, the little black creatures popped out from the dark hole inside his long white beard, then they died on the burnt pavement.
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RIContest theme image
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RIContest #1: Late Blooming Girl / Hiromi Suzuki
© short story by hiromi suzuki, 2023
published in RIC Journal (May 29, 2023)
via RIC Journal
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Tweets
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“He made a book out of the photos we took together.”
A flashlight with dead batteries illuminates the darkness.
“The woman is older and probably has a husband.”
The dreams of that day made me omnipotent, but the nightmares of last night depress me.
“So, I adored your simple, tidy room. But you are a seven-digit postcode generation.”
“He wrapped prawns and chives with rice papers.”
My husband would not have eaten the spring rolls. That night in Saigon he felt sick and lay in bed.
The wire cage surrounding the circus animals is torn apart with a knife. A cacophonous whistling sounds.
“Speak out quietly so mummy cannot hear you.”
Everyone says the demonstration exceeded 1000 people.
The tweets spilled out of each beak are their own stories. They chant their stories in chorus that will never be told.
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images: hiromi suzuki
Note: Tweets is a part of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1). The poem written in Japanese have been translated by hiromi suzuki, 2023.
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Tweets / Hiromi Suzuki
© poetry by hiromi suzuki, 2023
published in RIC Journal (April 17, 2023)
via RIC Journal
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Stolen Kisses & other poems
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Stolen Kisses
On the pavement covered with powder snow, A vision of the creek rises to the surface.
Meanwhile, In the forest, Where the trees collected subsoil water, A small pond will probably dry up.
Chasing the mirage from the Musashino Plateau, My thoughts turn to the water sleeping beneath Tokyo.
The narrow alleyway turns into a stream, Leading to the town where you must be living.
A black cat speaks to me showing her pink tongue From the shadow of a potted plant.
Meow!
...
Lemon Tree
Under the wobbly Rainbow Bridge, Danced Java with the Mars Girls Band.
Kissing by the pond, Dreamt of Yggdrasil.
We can no longer eat that lemon.
...
Crow in Black
A rainy garbage collection day.
You can spin your words without money. Crow in black mutters in my ear.
I know, I know. I know that he secretly hides a wire hanger, dumplings picked up from the rubbish bin in Shinjuku, and his precious black quill pen pulled out of his back, behind the transformer on a telegraph pole.
Crow shakes his beak clumsily and pokes the electricity cables with the tip of his pen, then the ink becomes the black raindrops and spreads our stories onto the pavement.
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images: hiromi suzuki
Note: Stolen Kisses & other poems are parts of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1). The poem written in Japanese have been translated by hiromi suzuki, 2023.
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Stolen Kisses & other poems / Hiromi Suzuki
© poetry by hiromi suzuki, 2023
published in RIC Journal (March 20, 2023)
via RIC Journal
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No One Knows
An old woman says to me: 'You are unhappy'. She then precariously holds the handle of a cup of tea between her thumb and forefinger, sticks out her chin. A young woman smoking beside her turns around and says over my shoulder: 'You are unhappy'. Her unbrushed hair is bunched on top of her head and some bits of biscuit are spilled from the edges of her mouth onto the breast of her T-shirt.
Under a wonderfully sunny sun. Wonderfully cheerful accordion band playing. At a pavement café in the early morning, a street sweeper is relaxing in a daze with a cup of coffee. An ant is swimming peacefully in a drop of spilt milk on the table. The street sweeper in overalls brushes off an olive that has fallen on his lap, takes a book out of the bag at his feet and begins to read it intently. The book has a familiar title on its cover.
It was a book I had written. For a long time I was alone at the bottom of the deep sea. The dim moonlight passed through the water and illuminated tenderly my writing pad. Every morning, a swarm of sardines formed a dense cylindrical formation and became a pneumatic tube system, express delivering postcards of ports from straits all over the world. Every afternoon, my small fantasies with compressed air were delivered to the publishers through the tube. Before long, I ran out of paper and pen ink, but the story I wrote became a bestseller.
People walk down the street with books in their arms, no one knows it is my story. No one knows that the old woman comes to the café with her meagre pension hidden in her hat, no one knows that the accordion band is missing one of its members, much less that the smoking woman has changed her brand of cigarettes. I have no way of knowing whether the book that the road sweeper shoved into his overalls pocket will be taken home and become his dream under his pillow or incinerated in a waste disposal plant. It is no use crying for a tale of the ant drowned over spilt milk.
No One Knows
© poetry by hiromi suzuki
Published in Visual Verse Vol. 10- Chapter 04 (February 2023)
via Visual Verse
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Cherry Blossoms Bloom
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Nipped in the bud. In a park with streetlights flashing blue and white, the tip of young branch breaks off from cherry blossoms which are in half bloom. Splattered sap flows into nostrils. The bittersweet mucus in amber colour is entangled in the late-night sea breeze. A brand new 1 metre 96 cm wide Cadillac with excited cousins passes by. They are insensitive to the noticing a smell of burned fat, even though the long wool sheepskin seat covers are on fire out of boot of a car. My nose aches, I have a painful boil at the back of my nose.
A book-shaped treasure box obtained by teasing the lovers. When I turned the pages, the past was modestly packed. A vintage Mickey Mouse doll, a bunch of hairpins made by connecting beads, an Austin miniature car, a concert set list for an entertainment by impersonators of the Motown Artists held in my hometown, a handmade hand mirror and a phone number of someone written on a ‘Fragile’ tag.
I begin to learn from a kindly older friend to look after scarlet carps that has started to prey on each other. I walk up and down the wobbly stairs and provide the fresh fish restaurant with the fishes we have brought back to life. Scarlet carps have no teeth in their mouths; they smash each other bodies with the back of their throats. The boundaries of everyday life are on the cutting board in the kitchen, day after day.
My nose swollen to the point of deformity, so I shall confess before the cherry blossoms in full bloom will fall away. I am now wondering whether the Castle of the Dragon King was in the sea or in the river. Let the reportage continue. Lie on a park bench and wait for the sunrise.
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images: hiromi suzuki
Note: Cherry Blossoms Bloom is a part of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1). The poem written in Japanese have been translated by hiromi suzuki, 2023.
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Cherry Blossoms Bloom / Hiromi Suzuki
© poetry by hiromi suzuki, 2023
published in RIC Journal (February 17, 2023)
via RIC Journal
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Mythology of Degree Zero
The Eiffel Tower withstood five lightning strikes a year, but the one-eyed knight in his armour was killed by just one discharge. A melted diamond prosthetic eye was not covered by fire insurance.
The Eiffel Tower remained forever on Paris postcards, but the one-eyed knight was swept away by the Seine. The armour drifted into the sea and sank to the bottom of Tokyo Bay as iron sand.
By the traditional Japanese furnace for iron called Tatara, the knight in armour was revived in mythology. The footprints of the one-eyed giant became a fountain, bringing forth an abundance of spring water.
Far from the Eiffel Tower, a café at the foot of Mt. Fuji. Daidarabotchi the giant who enjoys a cup of coffee with his eternal cold ice prosthetic eye shining in the souvenir postcards.
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Mythology of Degree Zero
© poetry by hiromi suzuki
Published in Visual Verse Vol. 10- Chapter 02 (January 2023)
via Visual Verse
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Isolated Life / Typewritten Artist’s Book
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No.15 of the TYPEWRITTEN artists’ book series: Isolated Life by Hiromi Suzuki
Acknowledgements:
In 2020, a 'stay at home' warning due to pandemic forced us to avoid outings. For the first time in a long time, I put Olivetti's typewriter on my desk and started this Isolated Life series. The typewriter keyboard has a sound and rhythm which makes me feel like I am playing music. On an isolated island in the ocean, tapping the keyboard I sang the songs alone. Then, I loaded my finished poems on a beautiful crafty boat that dear Petra Schulze-Wollgast prepared on the cove for me. I hope that my collection after drifting, and wandering will find its way to some ports and reach you all.  - hiromi suzuki
This book contains 20+2 typewriter graphics and two printer’s summaries.
Printed on Gestetner 160 mimeograph. Hand-bound edition of 60 copies, 26 pages, 28x21cm landscape size, January 2023.
...
via psw gallery / TYPEWRITTEN artists' book series
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Honey Yellow Mustard
It had begun to rain. As he left the post office, he passed a man on his mobile phone asking someone for money: “Just lend me some!”
The voice of the man, coarse and rude, faded and was replaced by the weak and pleading whisper of a young woman, who was now standing in front of him. The woman, tying her long black hair back with a glitter resin barrette, and wearing a well-tailored cashmere coat, was very beautiful. She looked down to keep the raindrops from hitting her face. Her thin ankles, in tiny pin-heeled pumps, shivered. She stepped nervously on the brick pavement. He was puzzled by her sudden offer. She had a healthy complexion. She looked like she had never taken the sandwich scraps given out every evening at the deli on the edge of the town.
Later, he would be ashamed of himself for thinking, even for a moment, that she might have been a whore.
It was still late afternoon. The special delivery mail had just finished at the post office. She must have lost or dropped her wallet, and, with it, the coins to buy stamps. “Go to the police box. They’ll help you”, he told the woman, and took the opportunity when the traffic lights turned green to escape across National Route 20, and down a passage between the buildings.
The rain, which is coming down in earnest, beats the roof of the arcade. An old café at the end of the shopping street is weary from a battering by the elements following a long spell of bad weather. Through the humid air, the aroma of coffee wafts over National Route 20 and is dispersed by the taxis and delivery trucks travelling back and forth. A water tank on the roof of the building has broken, and water is spurting out of a drainpipe mounted along the wall. Cascading rain and drainage trickle down the inset window of the café and drench his feet. He looks into the café through distorted glass. He wonders if the water heater has broken. The sofas, tables, pots and cups all appear hazy with the steam, floating in the dim light of a chandelier whose bulbs are flickering out. A family have taken their seats in a booth near the kitchen. Lights from the dying bulbs flash over the face of a little girl, who is eating a pancake drizzled with syrup. Her mother has a cappuccino, her father is reaching for a hotdog. Through the window, as seen from the pavement that runs along National Route 20, the interior is a peaceful blur. Meanwhile, from inside the café, drowned in vapour, the people only see the eternally cascading rain, and the drainage that trickles down the windowpane.
“Can I have your mustard?”
As he sits at the counter, pouring a San Pellegrino into his glass and ketchup onto a cheese omelette, the little girl from the family in the booth comes to stand beside him and starts talking. At the table, her father seems at a loss, his plate of grilled hotdog in front of him.
“My dad’s run out of mustard. Can he have yours?”
He hands the little girl the honey yellow bottle of squeezy mustard which is sitting on the counter.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Her right hand is sticky with pancake syrup when she pulls a chocolate candy from the pocket of her gilet. She holds it out to him in thanks.
In her other arm, she is holding a teddy bear. Inside its belly is a built-in alarm clock. The muffled tick of the second hand sounds the passage of time.
Rain and drainage continue to cascade down the windows. The lights from passing taxis on National Route 20 unspool through the café, lining the face of the little girl, flashing yellow, red, and orange.
           “Placebo Domino in regione vivorum.” *
He recalls a psalm read by a priest at the Orthodox Church in Tokyo some years before. Unconsciously, he repeats it.
* I will please the Lord in the land of the living.
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Honey Yellow Mustard — hiromi suzuki
© short fiction by hiromi suzuki
Published in Minor Literature[s] (January 19, 2023)
via Minor Literature[s]
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Lemon Elegy
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The tender, thin-peeled bright yellow lemons grown on California farms are expected to be full of sweet and sour juice. Meanwhile, the pimple-faced me hanging out in the sea-breezed sunshine is not sophisticated. Sometimes, swallowtail larvae could not reach the fruit and suffocated in the middle of my astringent skin.
Your beloved wild lemon tree.
You had plucked me from a young seedling, kissed with your lips and gently bit me. But your white front teeth, which had been braces, were broken by my thick and hard peel. And the acid that splashed from me into your eyes made you cry.
I came to my senses for a moment, rolled off your fingers and went back to the dry soil.
The wild lemon tree will bear more fruit for you. After another rainy season.
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images: hiromi suzuki
Note: Lemon Elegy is a part of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1). The poem written in Japanese have been translated by hiromi suzuki, 2022.
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Lemon Elegy | Hiromi Suzuki
© poetry by hiromi suzuki, 2022
published in RIC Journal (January 16, 2023)
via RIC Journal
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Tomte
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There is a fairy in Norse folklore called Tomte. The similar named Tomti was a mythical dwarf who lived in the northernmost part of Japan, which was once connected to Eurasia. The gatekeeper of the stream, Tomti lived under the bridge over the canal with a roof of butterbur leaves.
The lost one eye of the Greek mythological giant Cyclopes is the price to pay for wisdom. The eye is shining in the darkness of the melting snow. Dancing in the sunlight of the sunny morning.
People have driven them out of their peaceful days to replace the kitchen drains. The springs dried up and the fishes rotted. The river begs for rain, but the clouds are broken fridges.
The world is ending and the plates on the table are empty.
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images: hiromi suzuki
Note: Tomte is a part of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1). The poem written in Japanese have been translated by hiromi suzuki, 2022.
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Tomte | Hiromi Suzuki
© poetry by hiromi suzuki, 2022
published in RIC Journal (December 9, 2022)
via RIC Journal
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✱ ✱ ✱ information ✱ ✱ ✱
2023 Calendar for sale
鈴木博美 / hiromi suzuki Collages の 2023 CALENDAR です。 サイズは205×100mmの横長サイズ。 表紙+12枚、プラスチックケース付きで800円です。 卓上にも壁掛けにもできます。
上記プロフィール contact メールアドレス宛、
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をお知らせくださいませ。 追って、こちらより御案内申し上げます。
カレンダー代金(一部 800円)+送料 は銀行振り込みになります。
*Sorry, it is available in Japan only.
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Vanishing Water
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I hear the sound of water through the withered grapevine. Under the abandoned wards built on sand having lost all moisture, the river is flowing. I saw a deserter from the dungeon singing outside of the train. Rain is seeping out of the tunnel wall. Hangs from the ceiling, the deserter is sleeping. He was drunk on whiskey.
Je bois
Dès que j’ai des loisirs
Pour être saoul, pour ne plus voir ma gueule
Je bois
Sans y prendre plaisir
Pour pas me dire qu’il faudrait en finir*
I surely heard the sound of trumpet. A night club is on an intersection at the tunnels. Piano and accordion accompaniment echoes. The buzz of a strip show passes the metro station. I saw the magic stick of an illusionist flickering in the darkness. Closing time! Closing time! The wizard of illusions says the last train will come. The deserter woke up and jumped on a subway, ran away. I hear the sound of the sand dunes in a dry town being washed away. Below the horizon, everything must be a mirage of water.
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photography: hiromi suzuki
Quotation: *Je Bois by Boris Vian
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Vanishing Water / Hiromi Suzuki
© Text + Photography by hiromi suzuki, 2022
Published in The Anniversary Issue of RIC Journal (November 6, 2022)
Theme: Beyond the Ninth Desert
via RIC Journal
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I.
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III.
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IV.
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See the Sky About to Rain
© GIF Poetry by hiromi suzuki, 2022
published in otoliths issue 67 (November 1, 2022)
via otoliths Issue 67
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A Wind Has Blown the Rain Away *
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And blown the sky away and all the ginkgo leaves away. The leaves beginning to change colour, flit about in the air like butterflies in search of something.
The falling leaves on the soil are withered leaving their moist breaths, dyed in autumnal by gradation. Not death, but poetry.
Yellow carpets are waves towards winter
               (and what have you to say, wind wind wind—did you love somebody?*
Sing like E.E. Cummings.
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images: hiromi suzuki
...
Quotations: *A Wind Has Blown the Rain Away by E.E. Cummings
Note: A Wind Has Blown the Rain Away is a part of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1). The poem written in Japanese has been translated by hiromi suzuki, 2022.
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A Wind Has Blown the Rain Away * / Hiromi Suzuki
© poetry by hiromi suzuki, 2022
published in RIC Journal (October 5, 2022)
via RIC Journal
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My collages have been published in the avant-garde zine eYeland issue 1.
c22 press: An experimental publishing collective focusing on Dada, Surrealism, and the avant-garde
*Still time to claim your FREE COPY of eYeland issue #1 ⇒contact
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