Peanuts from Chiba arrive when my wife’s absence. I watch the parcel delivery guy on the monitor of video doorphone for a while. A young man holding a parcel cannot catch my gaze. The surveillance camera at the entrance hall of our condo captures his defenseless facial profile. I can see a line of sweat trickling down the tanned nape of the man. The cardboard container may be wet in his arms. Suddenly two or three pieces of in-shell peanuts fall out of a hole of the bottom. The head in a cap of the delivery guy who is flustered vanishes from the monitor.

My elder sister was wearing a blue wig. Riding on the swing in a playground, she put a lip balm on her dry lips. A twilight when the strange wind blew and scattered petals of geranium. She had a sore throat by the flu. Every time she crunched the peanuts slowly with her molars, the unseasonable dead leaves sounded in her semicircular canals. She coughed by just swallowing a few fragments. No, I know the moist wind is the sea breeze blowing from the east. After a short while, I hear a ding-dong of sudden rain that informs the sundown to the town. I hear the squeaky noise that a rusted bicycle braked sharply again. Her white flared skirt flutters in the flash of lightning.

Someone knocks on the door of kitchen. He is a bridegroom of tiny chipmunk. The back door is opening to the creek, so he will anchor his gondola of chicory leaves in the sink. Could you make only the yolk into a poached egg before my haircut? The golden is a colour that gives me a faint light to tow the Caribbean Cruise into the harbour late at night. This morning, people knocked on the door of the kitchen were the guests who brought an enormous red sea bream into the banquet room. At the kitchen table, an hors d’oeuvre of red radishes garnished with peanut butter are passed from hand to hand. Three dozen asparagus have been also boiled, so it must be spring. A creek murmuring in the sunshine under the feet of a widow. The stream joins the Meguro River and flows into Tokyo Bay, the final residence.

…

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: Peanuts 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.