Back to Issue Fifty-Four

[Time]

BY SHIZUKA OMORI, TR. YUKI TANAKA

Time

is always burning

but your

nakedness

subdues the fire.

 

[Sitting beside you]

BY SHIZUKA OMORI, TR. YUKI TANAKA

On March 20th (Sunday), Bunraku Performance:

“The Cherry Trees Along the Hidaka River— Ferry-Landing Scene”

Sitting beside you

as you take off

your contact lenses

reminiscent

of white fish scales.

 

[Sheep cloud]

BY SHIZUKA OMORI, TR. YUKI TANAKA

Sheep cloud:

I love how,

when you write,

your wrist

looks serious.

 

[Only I]

BY SHIZUKA OMORI, TR. YUKI TANAKA

Only I

could see it

in August:

deep inside you,

unmoving water.

Shizuka Omori was born in Okayama City in 1989. She is the author of three tanka collections: Burning the Palm of a Hand (2013), Camille (2018), and most recently, Hectare (2022), which won the Tsukamoto Kunio Award. Omori has received numerous awards and is recognized as one of the leading tanka poets of her generation. She lives in Kyoto and serves as an editor for Tō, a longstanding tanka journal.

 

Yuki Tanaka was born and raised in Yamaguchi, Japan. He is the author of the debut poetry collection, Chronicle of Drifting (Copper Canyon Press, 2025). His poems have appeared in The New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He has also co-translated, with Mary Jo Bang, A Kiss for the Absolute: Selected Poems of Shuzo Takiguchi, published by Princeton University Press. He lives in Tokyo and teaches at Hosei University.

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