Sawako Nakayasu

4 poems

Two brief histories of my body

1. Body

Hoist. Into, out of, transitions desired or unwarranted or forged or examined. Or again new. Gendered regendered and then reconsidered towards multiple continua. Exploratives of the anticipatory, naming of most unnamables. Where it has been is, butterfly-like, where it shall return, and, not-butterfly-like, where it will no longer return.


2. Relation

Is a planet. Was a planet, now longing. Is a plane. Was a surface, now reaching multitudinously. Was a figure, now approaching inarticulable destination. Was a destination, now a cycle. Was a cycle, now approximating. Might be an approximation. Of the formidable and tenuous reaches of longing, awash and lovely.

 

Most of the Cusp

and my eyes, full of speech

and my subway state of memory

and I have temporarily repudiated the usual alarms

and I am gifted by a thin surprise of hope-scum in the cool air

and I am often made of light and sad

and I hold in my arms the the future of my flesh

and time forks away from me no matter how tightly I hold on

and the rain and the imagined

and there are some sentiments I can’t ever perceive

and all the overturned owls or was it souls

and I know, you think you’re just a thoughtful lily

and your body to the floor, your body on the floor

and this find was a hole, is it dangerous or slippery

and then I rest and I hear everything

and hurricanes hurling words at rubber houses

and the fact of the weather

and pursuit of a floor

and one steep outcome leads to another

and you share likable details about the desert outside

and I am delusion or thunder organ

and this tear dropped by the dream

and the secrets of those expecting

and I’ve got three hammer blows and a microphone

and I brighten into you

and I also predator drone you

and you orange lightly, looking briefly

and especially a softer tragedy

and a certain heaviness in the opening flesh

and it’s gauzy and the burning

and my cool air carrying the hope and the patience

and was it all just coincidence, the sun?

and lovable, curious, sad, and accident, a great wind, in brimming layers

and two more slices of the embedded depths

and this was to be the final restlessness

and I got separated from the good position

and I love you and here are some enhanced souls for consideration

and so light I even brightly lack

and most of the cusp is mine to perceive

 

CUSP UPON CUSP: COSMOPHONICAN QUESTIONS (7) Bilingual Translations



S戰T略R策A略T方E針G计Y


C墜R毀A崩S潰H撞E毀S



D下O跌W向N下
O在N




Y您O的U你R的

輕T率H不O小U心G粗H魯T欠L考E慮S魯S莽




LIGHT光

 

THE SHALLOW SWEAT OF TOMORROW’S FEET

 

Sawako Nakayasu’s most recent books are Some Girls Walk Into The Country They Are From (Wave Books), Say Translation Is Art (Ugly Duckling), Pink Waves (Omnidawn, forthcoming), Settle Her (Solid Objects, forthcoming), and an anthology of 20th Century Japanese Poetry (New Directions, forthcoming). She teaches at Brown University.