I got two rabbits from the owner of the jewelry store next door. In my kitchen, I peeled the fur off and pulled their entrails out. After pouring the sweet and spicy sauce, I will roast them in the oven. In order to eliminate the smell of the flesh, the cavities in their bellies will be filled with herbs. The owner of the jewelry store is a romanticist. He takes a butterfly brooch out of the showcase, releases it between the glass wind bells which is hanging faded advertising. It is a rusty butterfly made with silver that has been left unsold. The butterfly lands on my gilet made with two rabbits’ furs. I will buy the butterfly brooch cheaply as a gift for Mother’s Day. The gilet smells bloody yet.

The owner of the jewelry store is a stylist. He writes a love letter at the bedside while taking siesta on Wednesday. As the customers arrive, he quickly gets up, takes a Windsor collar shirt from his old closet out, and will wear the necktie hung on a door handle of his bedroom. There is a huge oak wood bed in dusty warehouse on the second floor of the jewelry store, his fairy-like mother is bedridden. She will be found by looking for the hollow in the pillow. She who is his mother reciting a daydream, is tiny as a tip of pinkie.

It was the beach where a young horse streaming his mane in summer breeze passed by me. I did not notice it. I was more worried about the rabbits microwaved. Shall we drink orange juice? While listening to The Wannadies’ You and Me Song. While reading a book pictured by Saul Bass. The story about a boy who wants to go to Paris but cannot leave a small town because of mischievous birds. I decided to close my ears to the sound of marbles hitting the floor of upstairs. I will garnish the rabbit dish with green peas and mashed potatoes. The light in blue sways on the leaves of the ginkgo tree outside the window. No. The sunset shines through the fake sapphire of the jewelry store next door. When I was a child, a boy in the neighborhood said that the granite I picked up on the roadside was a diamond. The diamond seemed to have disappeared from my pocket when I was jumping off an incinerator of public-housing or playing the hide-and-seek in a bush under the lighthouse. From now, I will pick up my beautifully grown younger sister in front of the station where the murder took place this morning.

…

hiromi suzuki is a poet, fiction writer and artist living in Tokyo, Japan. She is the author of Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (Kisaragi Publishing, 2013), logbook (Hesterglock Press, 2018), INVISIBLE SCENERY (Low Frequency Press, 2018), Andante (AngelHousePress, 2019). Her works have been published internationally in poetry journals, literary journals and anthologies.
Web site: https://hiromisuzukimicrojournal.tumblr.com/
Twitter : @HRMsuzuki

*Note
This prose poetry is a part of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1) written in Japanese. It has been translated by hiromi suzuki in 2020.