There is one who loves me

randomly—a “me”

that isn’t me at all

If no one wants you

by the time you’re twenty-nine

give me a call, I made him say

Like someone from another planet—

but not really—

a friend whose surname changed

from Maeda to Ishii

Ill effects of low blood pressure—

no more worrisome

than my daily horoscope

At the end of day they lie on my finger,

slightly clouded—

contact lenses

Really, you see everything

don’t you now,

I whisper to the small, round lenses

Scrub my contact lenses hard

as if washing off the soil

of what they’ve seen

Bought a chatty birthday card—

a swarm of words

to cover the blank in me

What are you doing,

what are you thinking?

A romance made up of questions

is only a lifeless shell

Junk mail it may be

but still this postcard cheers me—

autumn evening

Waiting for your call—

wondering just how drunk you were

when you said those things to me

Ring after ring tells me you’re out—

I listen fondly,

grateful for any clue

Spaces in my appointment book

I’d been saving for you—

I fill them in, in pencil

Unable to make even one love mine,

I chew idly

on overcooked cauliflower

At my side

you liken our relationship

to me and my potted parsley

In Yokohama,

atop Harbor-Viewing Hill,

we probably look like lovers

Like lingering to watch a street pantomime

and gazing for a moment

into the performer’s eyes

Van Gogh exhibit—

move from one painting to the next,

seeing in the glass just my own face

Your memory of that day—

a day you say changed your life—

has nothing to do with me

Evening, and I wish

you and I were anatomical models

labeled simply “human”

“I want to eat, and not gain weight!”

So goes the commercial.

I want to be loved—

and not to have to love

I turn up the volume all the way,

listening to the Southern All Stars—

all around, everything is weeping

Summertime Ship

Slowly, like the earth waking,

it starts to move—

summertime ship

Amid torn paper streamers

in the summer wind

I sail for Shanghai aboard the Jianzhen

On the dark blue surface

of the East China Sea—

only sky, only waves

“All the lies you ever told

don’t really mean a thing,”

the ocean seems to say

Each one on deck with a private breeze,

a private time when conversation

isn’t wanted

Suddenly wonderful—

that each tiny islet from my porthole

should have a name

Beer on the table tilts in the glass—

that’s right, I’d been forgetting:

East China Sea

Bearing a wind that calls me inland,

color of milk caramel—

Yangtse River

A little Chinese girl

dances in court costume

like a windless summer day

“Detour!”

Lively, glittering Shanghai streets,

crammed with bicycles and men at work

Bottles of Tsing Tao beer cry out

as the truck zooms round the corner—

Shanghai

Must be getting fond of this place—