in memoriam
you watch her heaving chest where you once lay sleeping
hoping for it to last & you keep on thinking of the times
when she left & came back for you crying on the first day
of kindergarten eyes suspiciously glued on her face as
she leaned against a mango tree beckoning you to look
ahead face the mean blackboard when you got home
you found out that your father had taken her to the airport
bound for Hong Kong to wipe tables & scrub toilets your
elder sisters insisted you now had to wash dishes & iron
your school uniform for you no longer had a mother until
she came back four years later when her employment
contract ended & bribed you out to a casino & abandoned
you in the care of cashiers at McDonald’s on United
Nations Avenue leaving you with a pile of fries & burgers
to dream & forget when she had no money left she came
home to the place where she had left you so long ago now
waiting for you to tell her your name & you listen closely
for a heartbeat in her chest where you once lay sleeping
& it whispers something but you no longer remember her
name.
Touring Dead Novelists in Tokyo
The six-tatami mat room leads to Roka’s dark wood bungalow cradled in a tangle of bamboo grove. The narrow engawa creaks as I enter a shoji door. A woodblock calligraphy in kanji offers a greeting: Farm when it’s sunny. Read when it rains. I follow Footprints in the Snow to a carved rock sitting in a forest of green ginkgo.
a sparrow’s shadow
rests on my itchy eyelids
glimmer of koi fish
I eat a bowl of tororo soba before embarking on a journey in the fluorescent labyrinth of Sunshine City, where people mirror wants in a kaleidoscope. I exit in the suburban dimness of Zōshigaya and locate grave one-fourteen-one-three to recite a solemn dream for the spirit of Soseki. Somewhere near a sakura tree, Sensei’s friend, is also laid to rest.
a lady wearing
a pink hat lights incense sticks
eulogy in smoke
I walk along a railroad track for the footbridge where Osamu once stood, leaning against a railing, gazing at the sunrise or sunset. It’s hard to tell when things are in black and white. I climb up the unsteady structure. The massive sun renders the sky scarlet, blurring the tracks that stretch to the horizon, as trains slither like snakes beneath my feet.
nascent autumnal
grass on Tamagawa’s berm
suicide on replay
after a quarrel
borderline between—
sanity & insanity
Buddha & Bukowski
inertia & movement
of cheeks & nose
pricked ingrown
& blistered toes
Jack & Goose
gun & noose
peace & destruction
pills & sessions
peeled skin that feels not
perhaps too much
whiteness & hue
canvas & view
K & I
sea & sky
dream & life
lurking in limbo
—what & what?
Marc Perez is an immigrant-settler on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Wauthuth First Nations. His creative prose have appeared in Ricepaper Magazine and PRISM international 56.3. His poems and short story are forthcoming in TAYO Literary Magazine, Issue 8.
1 comment
Wonderful!