Mountain potato
Hirata Toshiko
My stomach felt tight and so I thought what if and when I tried giving birth I
ended up with a human child a six or seven-year old boy no less, who comes up
to my chest now I don’t mind bearing stuff I like but I do not like human
children and so at a loss, I check him out, flip him around, peek in his mouth
when I find that his legs poking out of his shorts are just like good mountain
potatoes, of a nice shape and color sliced clean right at the ankle the cross-section
a bit slimy, just like mountain potato mountain potato is one of my favorites
so I decide to wait and see
The child had trouble walking scooted forward slowly on smooth stainless surfaces,
leaving a trail like a slug but he hurt pretty badly on sharp, pebbly surfaces
I tried to buy him shoes but there were none that fit no shoes that fit a kid
with nothing past the ankles I thought I should feed him, or rather, invited
him to a restaurant you know I don’t eat, he replied coldly<
This cold manner of speech sounds familiar oh yes an old lover, I realize and
so then it follows that he must have been my child as well<
If this kid eats anything he will die that much sooner which might mean we’d
have to part ways again and so I walk on without holding his hand, keep turning
back and turning back at him<
The smooth path fades away like the tide the place is scattered with triangular
rocks the child’s potatoes wear down no matter how careful I am each step
leaves behind some ground potato, shining on a rock<
The sight of which filled me with regret, and I touched him, through his shirt,
thinking how wonderful if only he were potato all the way from the neck down
but he felt sort of human-like and sort of potato-like and I just couldn’t
quite tell
Translated by Sawako Nakayasu
Hirata Toshiko - Hirata Toshiko (1955) is a prominent Japanese poet and novelist. During the 1980s, she, along with Ito Hiromi, emerged as one of the foremost voices so-called “women’s boom” of poetry. Her poetry is known for its directness and black humor. In the last decade, she has increasingly turned to writing novels, which often feature ordinary people in bizarre circumstances that lead them to question the traditional family system and the spots allotted to them in society.
