While looking up at the mansion bathing in the sun on the cliff, walk through the hill cut beside Yoyogi-Hachiman Shrine. She has trading stamps in her chest pocket of a button-front shirt. The back of the shirt is transparent to the tender flesh due to the passing shower and her sweat.

She traded her stamps for everything with an owner of the mansion. Swedish wooden toys, Goldfish and First day of issue cover, Microwave oven and Albums du Pere Castor, Delivery locker and Everything. She got everything from the man. Using that opportunity, she had him pull out her wisdom tooth and spray the mercurochrome on her ingrown nails.

When her hand has less stamps, she rushed to shop at the mall. She bought a bag of cowpeas to get one stamp, cotton threads and an awl to get three stamps, and 500 grams of Boston butt to get four stamps.

Her mother’s bone has been buried at the bottom of the river. As she looks down into the muddy stream after the rain, she can see the dead eating the beetles on the back of the stone, laughing in a good mood, teasing the heels of the labourers’ feet that seek coolness. Hearing an étude from the sitting room of a private house along the river, the bone thinks of the childhood daughter playing the piano. While swaying the smile in colour of the sunny place like water lilies.

…

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), Found Words from Olivetti (Simulacrum Press, 2020). Her works have been published internationally in poetry journals, literary journals and anthologies.web site: https://hiromisuzukimicrojournal.tumblr.com/ Twitter: @HRMsuzuki

Note: Water Lilies is a part of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by hiromi suzuki. The collection was written in Japanese and published by Kisaragi publishing of Japanese publisher, 2013. This poetry has been translated by hiromi suzuki, 2021.