Weather Patterns
Kyong-Mi Park
Evening
Knit diagonally. Get off the spoon. Crisp, grand celery. Chop fatback at a
steady clip and walk on. Square of a green onion. Cloud-shape of a Russian dumpling
and the shape of a hat and. Teeth and miso and gestures and. Go out front and
give it inflection. Spring, as it ever is spring. The handle on the small pot
clatters. These sandals have a fine patina. Standing in the bicycle space. The
tough solid things sink. Water loosely seeps in. Spring, as it ever is spring.
Oh, I’d like to hit my head on a tofu corner and die. (Would like to laugh.)
Even here twenty-three years have passed.
Always folding the evening in like this at the mouth of spring, that’s
me.
I get this tofu after selecting it carefully.
I set my chopsticks in from the corner and bring it to my mouth.
As the rich taste of beans soaks into my tongue – how I wish I could give
you some – my temples convey. Wish I could share this with her –
but she’s no longer in this world – my heart tightens. My chopsticks
quicken to the tofu, I clench my jaw. I chew the tofu and my teeth sound, like
an idiot. A line of water is drawn to my ears, and I choke back my crying.
We’ll probably meet again.
The chest of the sky expands blue on the brink of night is drawn closer.
Let’s hitch our promises firmly to the Big Dipper.
Instrument
Because this instrument
started playing on its own
its strings go just a touch out of their way
for the brightness of the bright room
To strum is to grow internal
Fingertips gently touch my internal voice
My breath gathers pleats
and the sound enters softly
Will only that which is irreducible
to nothing
continue
Will it vaguely point out
gather up
My nails, and ears
Rhythm is not how it used to be
Rhythm is measured in a box
Rhythm measures my heart, just a touch
Smoothly
ducking the air
and even then her Chima, appearing to breathe
Translated by Sawako Nakayasu
Kyong-Mi Park - Kyong-Mi Park was born in 1956. Since publishing her first book of poetry Supu (Soup) in 1980, she has continued to publish numerous works of poetry and prose in major Japanese publications including La Mer, Waseda Bungaku, Ginka and Asahi Weekly. She is noted for her translations of Gertrude Stein: The World is Round (1987) and Geography and Plays (co-translation 1992), in addition to other translations such as Over the Moon by Mother Goose (1990). Her essays have been collected in The Guardian Spirit in a Garden: Words to Remember (1999), and There are always birds in the air (Goryu Shoin, 2004), while recent collections of poetry include That little one (Shoshi Yamada, 2003), and The cat comes with a baby cat in its mouth (Shoshi Yamada, 2006). In 2001 she participated in the exhibit Dialog 2001: Artists in Banff (Canadian Embassy Gallery, Tokyo). Park’s work has been translated into English, Korean and Serbian, with English translations published in Aufgabe, Factorial, HOW2, Green Integer Review, and Other Side River, an anthology of contemporary Japanese women’s poetry. Park currently teaches at Wako University and the Yotsuya Art Studium.
