A cook apprentice holding a bone-in chicken for the soup in a translucent vinyl bag comes from the other side of the crowded pedestrian crossing. Wears a white chef coat, exposes to the sun his sweaty short hair and sandaled feet, he passes by me. It is an evening about to rain. I can see that the plastic bag is full of fresh blood. 

The lover who lacks front teeth takes off his glasses and kisses me. He gave me a can of foreign peppers which was named Pygmalion in the hotel lounge, though.

In the model unit of a new condominium, a sea bream is displayed on the kitchen countertops made of engineered stone. The fish was already rotten, though. I feel the smells that someone bites the soy sauce-pickled garlic in a built-in closet of the bedroom.

Do not use the tap water in a washroom, because the earthworms come out of the faucet. Brush your teeth with the bottled water. As I take one of the overlapping paper cups, the earthworms that are afraid of dehydration will overflow one after another from the bottom.

…

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: The Feasts Journal is a part of the first poetry collection Ms. cried – 77 poems by

hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013 ISBN978-4-901850-42-1). This poem written in Japanese has been translated by hiromi suzuki, 2021.

The first publication in Japanese: Eureka November Issue, 1999 (Seidosha, Tokyo Japan)