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Satoshi Iwai
Crying Ecstasy
I don’t sympathize with cicadas, because they cry not for regrets about having lost their warm infancy, but for the promiscuous love. I was told this by the water gushing out of the broken faucet in my bathroom. The color of the summer sky in the mirror is so blue.
My apartment is an hourglass. Lying in the small bathtub, I see the sands of innocence slowly flying around in the air of late afternoon. The more tightly I hold my knees, the older the false memories get. My cell phone never rings, only collects hundreds of pictures of clouds.
Tonight, like other nights, there will be a suspicious fire somewhere in the city. The moon and stars will shine discreetly for the helpless souls. I won’t sympathize with the cicadas thrashing about on the driveway. They just want to dance in their lethal ecstasy.
Under the Sun
A blue, blurry silhouette lying on the early morning beach, that looks like the body of a dead shirk. The line of the red cluster-amaryllises leading to the ruined boathouse, that looks like the bloody scratches floating in the air. No one except me can be seen on the balconies.
Since the day of arrival, the people of this fishing village have bewildered me. The boys always salute me wearing eye patches. Every old women’s hair turns gray overnight. Whenever I am taking a nap, a loud work song breaks into my room and distorts my dream.
A strong wind blows from the sea. Hundreds of squids drying on the rack wriggle their feet all at once. A woman wearing a red dress on the beach and kissing the blue, blurry silhouette of something, that looks like my wife. I am so sleepy that I can hardly keep my eyes open.
Satoshi Iwai was born and lives in Kanagawa, Japan. He writes poems in English and in Japanese. His English work has appeared in Fairy Tale Review, Newfound, Into the Void, Phantom Drift, Outlook Springs and elsewhere.
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