After taking a private railway for about an hour from Shinjuku, the bus that departs at a station in the suburbs will arrive in a residential area surrounded by thickets in less than 15 minutes. Recently, it became famous for the residents’ movement against the dioxins’ pollution due to illegal dumping of used electric appliances in the natural areas. But when the salesman visited, it was a boring town where he could not resist the yawns, because the same shaped houses built by a major home builder lined and the dry woods just made a rustling sound in the cold wintry wind. It was a mediocre town where he could not stand the dizziness because of whisperings in daily lives that were spit out from the rotating ventilation fan for preparing the supper.

The salesman lost his directions in the puzzle-like town, sees a girl walking her bike in the dusk. She wears the shorts on her bare feet in the middle of winter. As the salesman asks her the way to the regular customer’s house, she says, because the monkeys are aiming for foods from the top of the tree, the inhabitants on the Kamakura Highway are often attacked by monkeys. I want to put you on my bike, but if we are in a hurry, the fighting bull that sharpened his horns like knives escaped from the bullring and will try to chase us, the girl says. There is a ping-pong table in the backyard of my house, let’s play ping-pong together, she starts walking ahead of him.

By the way, the salesman is selling ping-pong tables. But he has missed the chance to say the purpose of his business. He is staring unconsciously at the girl’s thighs like white vanilla cream for a while.

Going down the slope of a hillock road that is a shortcut as she suggests, they find themselves slipping and falling from a vertical cliff. I gave up the ping-pong, the girl is lying on the narrow ditch of a dried stream between the layers of dead leaves. I just want to stay like this, murmurs while a nosebleed like strawberry jam drops on her lips.

The salesman has forgotten. The day when he visited the town. He quit the business of selling ping-pong tables, became a copier repairer. Also occasionally mails the product catalogues and is in business.

…

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

Notes:
Kamakura Highway – Kamakura Kaidō is a general term for roads leading from various places to Kamakura. There are countless numbers of roads called Kamakura Kaido all over Japan. This prose poetry is a part of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing,