KABUKICHO


The rats and touts begin the day at dusk 
As wiry, weary businessmen descend 
The streets in threes, unequal to the task 
Of drinking hard until the evening's end. 
I've learned to make an absent face, conceal 
My eyes from people pushing tits and soap, 
Adopt robotic grace, pretend I feel 
No hands where hands are caressing my coat. 
"You like to dance? You want to dance tonight?" 
My only answer is a tiny smile, 
Of muted declination. Turning right, 
I see the hotel (mock Egyptian style) 
Behind the door, fat scarabs climb the wall, 
And I wait in reception for your call.

Sonnet


あの人はものすごく疲れた顔をして、「不吉な夢を見た」と言った。「父が死ぬ夢だ」と。
私は、「ああ、勘の鋭いこの人の言うことだ、間違いない。お父様は亡くなられたのだろう。そして、このバスが町に戻った時点でこの旅は終わるだろう」と思った。
不思議と残念だとか悲しいという気持ちはなく、ただ淡々と受け止めていた。
バスは想定内のエンジントラブルを数回起こし、予定より四時間遅れで町へと戻った。あの人はバスを降りるとその足で日本に電話をかけにゆき、私は先に宿へ戻った。
部屋でトランクを開き、荷物を整理しながら、つい先ほど見てきた砂漠の光景とらくだ達の物憂げな眼差し、それから、冗談とも本気とも取れる熱心さで求婚してくるらくだ使いの青年のことなどを思い出していた。
そうしている内に、あの人が部屋に戻ってきて、私の顔を見るとふぅと小さく息を吐いた。「どうだった？」そう尋ねると、「だいじょうぶだった」と答えた。想像と異なるその答えに拍子抜けしたが、私は会ったこともないその人がまだこの世に存在してくれていたことを心から嬉しく思った。彼はこちらへ近づくとだまって私をハグした。
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最近ではあまり見なくなった夢を見て、私は目が覚めてからもベッドの中で呆然としていた。知らぬ間に頬に涙が伝っていたらしく、となりで眠る恋人を気づかれぬようにとそっとベッドから抜けだした。
私はベランダに出てあの日の朝のことを思い出していた。いくつかの意思と偶然が重なって、私たちはそこにいた。アザーンの鳴り響くモロッコの朝。

モロッコ

モロッコ


Excerpt From Blueberry&nbsp;Convoy


Excerpt From Blueberry Convoy


Turn&nbsp;around


Turn around


Out in the street it was was humid. Rain water dripped from the red lanterns that hung along the eaves of the izakaya, and the usual barkers paced beside the curb in front of them.
“What do you want to do?” John asked her. Yuki refused to tell him her age. She had said she was twenty-nine. John thought the skin on her hands made her look thirty-five or forty.
“You choose,” she said. “You choose. I don’t know.”
She was small and her hair was tinted strawberry-blond. Her clothing looked expensive. She was drunk on beer.
“Do you need to go home?” He asked.
“Why?”
“It’s late.”
“I’m OK. Daijoubu.”
“What are you thinking?”
She stared at him.
“Nani kangaete iru no?” he asked again. “What are you thinking?”
She laughed. “Nothing. I’m not thinking.”
“Do you still want to go to a hotel?”
“I don’t know. You choose,” she said. “I think there is many in Kabukicho.”
John knew she was married. Sometimes she said she was not. He liked to think she was.
“What about your husband?” he asked.
“No husband.”
“You said you have a husband.”
“He doesn’t care,” she said. She laughed and hugged John around the waist. “You choose,” she said.
John kissed her. Her mouth was very wet and tasted like beer.
 
They walked past Hotel Vanilla Resort, Hotel Satellite, Hotel I AM and into Hotel Magic Soft. The exterior of the building was gaudy and made to look like a castle. He led her by the hand through the glass doors. They looked at illuminated pictures of different options on the room-guide control panel.
“Which one?” he asked.
“You choose. Shiranai.”
John pressed the button under number 302 which marked a moderately priced room.
 
MAGIC SOFT
ROOM 302
BLUE SOFT: YOU ARE IN THE SEA
休REST: ¥6,000
泊STAY: ¥9,000
 
The room was long and narrow. It was warm. The walls were sand colored and decorated with ocean fish swimming through coral and a giant squid whose tentacles extended the length of two walls. There was a slot machine and a Nintendo 64 in the corner near a large, flat television.
Yuki carefully removed her shoes and went into the bathroom.
“One moment,” she said.
John took two beers out of the small refrigerator.
He sat on the bed and drank. He looked up at the ceiling which was wallpapered in the night sky, and at its center was the dark outline of a humpback whale, as big as the bed.
Yuki walked to the him and sat. She looked around the room and drank from her can of beer. She gulped quickly and fell back on a pillow.
“You drink fast,” John said.
“No.”
Her cheeks had reddened. John leaned over and kissed her. He opened her shirt and looked at her breasts. He thought they were fine.
“I’m shy,” she said.
“I don’t think so.”
“I am shy. Hazukashi.”
“Are you shy with your husband?”
“I don’t know. Why do you want? I’m divorced.”
He laughed. “Are you?”
“He doesn’t care about it.”
“Ok.” John finished his beer and decided he did not care one way or the other.
Yuki crawled on her knees to the wall.
She played with the buttons on the nightstand. The lights faded and tiny stars appeared on the ceiling and spun slowly through the room. The wall-coral glowed pink as did the tentacles of the giant squid.
She stood and straddled him on the bed and waved her arms slowly like a ghost and made “Whooooing” sounds as the stars moved across her bare chest, and swirling up her thin neck to the night sky and the shining whale above them.

Magic&nbsp;Soft


Magic Soft


<a href="/issue-02/starnes1.jpg"><img src="/issue-02/starnes1.jpg" alt="Painting by Sadie Starnes" title="Kristopher (after Manet’s “Portrait d’Emile Zola”)"></a>
oil on canvas/ 70 x 90 cm / 2013

Kristopher (after Manet’s “Portrait d’Emile&nbsp;Zola”)


Kristopher (after Manet’s “Portrait d’Emile Zola”)


<article>
Always looking through windows here: 
moving trains a sliding tripytych; 
a cross-hatched diptych of balcony doors; 
the broken fresco 
of a glass front cafe depicting 
dirty scraped snow 
dripping eaves 
rushing people in heavy coats 
and a florist’s cart, 
a block of green 
broken by points of color 
and the florist’s red hands 
moving among the leaves and petals 
so unbelievable in this setting 
as to go unseen 
except framed behind a sheet of glass 
</article>
<article>
Leaving the tunnel 
snowy rooftops and a gun metal sky, 
power lines streaking black 
and silver where they catch the light 
above the street 
furrowed with gray snow. 
A smear of weak sun 
sheds enough light 
to show passengers’ faces 
watery projections 
running over the slopes and planes 
of snowy roofs 
and unlit windows 
</article>
<article>
Slender lamps hang on long wires 
halfway down a picture window 
casting weak halos over each head 
bent above the long counter. 
Outside, a pole reaches to meet 
the lamps halfway, 
and slings its lines 
across the intersection 
marking a border 
between shadow and sun 
on the row of white buildings 
down the intersecting street 
</article>
<article>
At Noborito, waiting for the express to pass, 
behind an old lady the JR tracks stretch. 
People cross, and a crow 
crosses overhead. 
A ferris wheel and a bridge 
sit still and dark, 
the last thing before the low hills 
huddled along the horizon 
under a heavy sky. 
</article>

Windows


<a href="/issue-02/shimada3.jpg"><img src="/issue-02/shimada3.jpg" alt="Painting by Mayuko Shimada" title="Eyewitness"></a>
目撃者(予期せぬ驚き) Eyewitness
 
<a href="/issue-02/shimada1.jpg"><img src="/issue-02/shimada1.jpg" alt="Painting by Mayuko Shimada" title="Utopia"></a>
どこにでもあって　どこにもない Utopia
 
<a href="/issue-02/shimada2.jpg"><img src="/issue-02/shimada2.jpg" alt="Painting by Mayuko Shimada" title="Drama of the World"></a>
世界が繋がる場所(世界は無数にある。あなたとわたしにあるように。) Drama of the World

Sonnet

モロッコ

Excerpt From Blueberry Convoy

Turn around

Magic Soft

Kristopher (after Manet’s “Portrait d’Emile Zola”)

Windows

Three Paintings

KABUKICHO