Autumn In Peninsula

Satoshi Iwai

 

I am glad to hear that the endless summer is not really endless. Our emperor and empress ordered their painter to let the summer constellations stay forever on the ceilings of their detached palace, but all the stars dropped on the floor as soon as the painter died of cadmium poisoning.
        Rulers tend to think that people are nothing but the ears of rice plants waving in the wind, but we know the truth is always carried by the late summer wind. The farmers sprinkle pesticides on their paddies just like magic rituals, but they have no faces under the sun.
        When autumn comes, the sickles take us away from the reticent ground. We dream a golden dream in the dark granary. Our emperor and empress also dream a dream, a dream of endless summer. Their faces are sweating excessively while sleeping in each bedroom.

 
 

Satoshi Iwai was born and lives in Kanagawa, Japan. He writes poems in English and in Japanese. His English work has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, FLAPPERHOUSE, Small Po[r]tions, Your Impossible Voice, Poetry Is Dead, and elsewhere.