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++ Ryo Kisaka's Poetry
space
1:00 P.M.
Under the tree at the city library
in New York,
I sat down with
my classmate, Doumbia.
I drew
a map of my Japanese house
in my notebook.
This is my father's room.
This is my mother's room.
In my father's room
I drew my father spreading out his arms,
and I put a skirt on my mother.
A mother cannot have her private room
until her child leaves home.
(Japanese housing,
Japanese women.
Both are tangled, constrained.)
As I used the sample expression
which we learned at the English class
today,
we laughed
looking at
each other.
We have come to this point
laughing together.
Now it is midnight in Japan.
My father and mother should be sleeping.
I laid the small house face down,
then
Doumbia
began to talk about
strong sunshine, Africa.
translated from the Japanese by Ruth E. Foley and Kazue Daikoku in March 2002, in Massachusetts and Kawasaki through the internet
Photograph by Seidoh SUJAKU
Other poems by Ryo Kisaka: "Theater"(Ryo Kisaka's Poetry) and "How to use solitude", "The back"(Fragments #20)
another picture and writing by Seidoh SUJAKU: "Flower blooming at Descartes's tomb"(Fragments #17)
about the author
Ryo Kisaka is a poet in Tokyo. When she graduated from university, she self-published her first book. Her second poetry book was awarded the Hanatsubaki Contemporary Poetry Prize in Japan. She continues writing poems and publishing poetry books, and writes essays and translates a lot of picture books into Japanese. She also won a prize for her poetry book published in 1996.
Her new bio is here.
about the photographer
Seidoh Sujaku was born in Japan in 1959. From 1980 to 1987 he composed minimalistic music and performed music as a member of an ensemble Kaku-teien(Das Buch der hängenden Gärten). In 1997 he started to take pictures. Since 1999 he has been photographing for commercial media, preparing portraits for magazines "Cut" and "Elle Japon". He had his first one-person show "Judo Shashin" (Passive-Active Photography) at the INAX Gallery 2 in Tokyo in May 2001. His official website "Sujaku" is here.
Copyright 1997 by Ryo Kisaka
English translation Copyright 2002 by Ruth E. Foley and Kazue Daikoku
Photograph Copyright 2002 by Seidoh Sujaku
=see the picture again?=
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