Japanese American literature

To an Ex-Lover

Photo by KAZU NISHIO.
Violinist YUMI MIYAGISHIMA and Poet YURI KAGEYAMA at What The Dickens in Tokyo, SUN Sept. 7, 2008.
The poem is part of the program at “TALKING TAIKO,” an evening of multicultural poetry and music with master percussionist WINCHESTER NII TETE at BUNGA 6:30 p.m. SUN Sept. 28.

TO AN EX-LOVER
First published in Oakland Tribune; one of the poems in “Peeling,” by Yuri Kageyama.

You could only sleep, turned away. EVERY NIGHT, HIS BICEPS PILLOW MY HEAD.

You told me that she was a hard act to follow, being the daughter of your parents’ friends. Before your parents came over, you hid my things in the closet.

My friends were too strange, you used to complain. That I stayed up till six in the morning, while you slept, and slept, while you worked, and was never hungry the same time you were. WHEREAS, AFTER NIGHT-LONG DISCUSSIONS, HE TAKES ME FOR DAWN-LIT SNEAKERED STROLLS ALONG THE BEACH.

I let dust collect on the kitchen table, left things here and there, like animal droppings, cluttering your cleanliness.

You felt sorry for me. You paid my bills, got me health insurance, provided me with gas cards and made me laugh with John Wayne imitations. Because I always sat pensive, with a sad distressed lonely look. Even now, you tell me I’m a zombie. HE LAUGHS THAT I’M ALMOST AS CRAZY AS HE IS HIMSELF.

You’d watched how your older brothers had hurt your parents, by becoming a musician, trying dope, dating Chinese, so you’d vowed to a way of spineless kindness, obsessed with moderation, avoiding conflict till you’d, at times, crunch onto the floor, holding in the tumor of self-denial within your brain.

WE WALK TOGETHER, GIGGLING IN J-TOWN, ARM IN ARM, BECAUSE THE “COMMUNITY” IS SO LUDICROUS SOMETIMES. While you told me, never to mention your name in J-town again. For, deserted in insecurity, I used to sit, gulping down bourbon bitterness, telling the blues, how I loved you and you didn’t love me.

You loved me by fixing the car. You loved me by criticizing how I didn’t dress San Francisco. You loved me by watching “Starsky and Hutch,” sipping soda, after an eight-to-three-thirty school-teaching day. You loved me by telling me I could do whatever I wanted; you had no right to restrict my freedom. So I went discoing, while you visited your parents for the weekend. HE WANTS TO BE WITH ME. HE JUST TELLS ME, “DON’T FUCK AROUND.”

I still don’t smoke in front of you.

After I moved out and out of your life, you bought me sweetheart roses that never opened in the water. HE SURPRISES ME WITH AN ORCHID CORSAGE THAT BLOSSOMS WHITE-PURPLE WITH THE PRIDE IN THE LOVE WE FEEL.

You played the trumpet alone in the attic.

When I touched you, my fingers drained your energy. HE KISSES ME ON THE MUNI BUS.

You didn’t know why I cried when you stated matter-of-factly, it took no talent to write poetry. You grin cynically over coffee at a shopping center, that now you never want a woman who’s into art. You keep on telling me that you’ve seen the light; you want to get married within a year, and you’re searching hard.

You faithfully attended family gatherings for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, piano and dance recitals, countless birthdays, and brought back roast turkey, potato salad, sushi and cake.

WE GO LISTEN TO JULIAN PRIESTER OR KEHVAN-LENNON-ONAJE, SEE ZATOICHI AND ITALIAN FILMS, DANCE TO VIVA BRAZIL ON LOMBARD STREET OR CHAKA KHAN IN THE DIMNESS OF HIS ROOM.

You said you loved me because I cooked relatively well and I had sweet mannerisms. I DON’T BOTHER ASKING FOR HIS REASONS.

You explained to me that I was not the type of woman you wanted for a wife. We were incompatible, despite our two years together. When you finally proposed, with tickets to Hawaii _ you realized that to take this plaything out of its glass case on the mantle, at your own leisure, could add excitement to your life _ when you finally declared your love, I had aborted mine long ago. HE SMILES TO ME, LET’S GET MARRIED TOMORROW; I REPLY, OKAY, LET’S.

HE THANKS ME FOR MY LOVE, FOR BEING AROUND.

HE NEVER TURNS AWAY, EVEN IN HIS SLEEP.

Reading Sunday, Sept. 28 in Tokyo

We are doing a reading with music later this month at a place called Bunga near Ogikubo station (Chuo Line) starting 6:30 p.m. (Poster design by Annette Dorfman/Winchester photo by Takashi Itoh)

Poet YURI KAGEYAMA and percussionist WINCHESTER NII TETE present “TALKING TAIKO,” a multicultural evening of the spoken word with music that challenges the boundaries of continents, genres and generations.

Yuri Kageyama’s poetry and short fiction have appeared in many literary publications, including “Y’Bird,” “Greenfield Review,” “San Francisco Stories,” “On a Bed of Rice,” “Breaking Silence: an Anthology of Asian American Poets,” “Other Side River,” “Yellow Silk,” “Stories We Hold Secret” and “MultiAmerica.” She has read with Ishmael Reed, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Geraldine Kudaka, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Russel Baba, Seamus Heaney, Yumi Miyagishima and many other artists. Her short story “The Father and the Son” will be in a January 2009 anthology, “Pow-Wow: 63 Writers Address the Fault Lines in the American Experience.” She has a book of poems, “Peeling” (I. Reed Press). She is a magna cum laude graduate of Cornell University and holds an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Master percussionist Winchester Nii Tete hails from the honorable Addy-Amo-Boye families of drummers in Ghana. He has performed with the Ghana national troupe, Sachi Hayasaka, Yoshio Harada, Takasitar, Naoki Kubojima, Tsuyoshi Furuhashi and many other artists. His repertoire is expansive, including jazz, hip-hop, reggae, pop and world music. Besides playing original compositions with poetry, he will deliver a taste of his exuberant, refined and eclectic sound with guest musicians and his students. He is a brilliant young star who is certain to follow in the footsteps of his legendary uncles Obo Addy and Aja Addy in gaining international acclaim.

Winchester Nii Tete and Yuri Kageyama met in Tokyo last year and have been working on collaborative pieces. Director Yoshiaki Tago (“Believer,” “Worst Contact”) joins as another collaborator in filming “Talking Taiko.”

New title for the anthology

The anthology edited by Ishmael Reed, award-winning novelist and poet, with dancer/violinist Carla Blank, has a new title:
“POW-WOW: 63 Writers Address the Fault Lines in the American Experience.”
January 2009: Da Capo Press.
I’m in good company _ Langston Hughes, Toni Cade Bambara, Alejandro Murguía, Erskine Caldwell, Kevin Powell.
Pre-order from Amazon!

Fiction at Ben’s Cafe in Tokyo

I’m going to the Fifth Sunday Fiction Series at Ben’s Cafe in Takadanobaba, Tokyo.
Sunday, August 31, 5 PM
I will read my short story “Seeds of Betrayal,” published in this 1995 anthology “On a Bed of Rice,” edited by Geraldine Kudaka.
The featured reader will be Janice Young, author of the novel “Sweet Dauma: a Japan Satire.” Also reading will be Japan Times writer and novelist Michael Hoffman.
The host is Hillel Wright, author of “Border Town.”

Poetry and Percussion

“Little YELLOW Slut” and “SuperMom” at CoZmos Cafe in Tokyo July 19, 2008, with Winchester Nii Tete on the talking drum, kpanlogo and djembe.
Winchester Nii Tete has been studying drums since he was a baby because he is from a family of professional drummers in Ghana.
Many Americans have heard of Obo Addy, one of the originators of Worldbeat. Well, that’s Winchester’s uncle.
Many Japanese have heard of Aja Addy, who played with Kodo. Well, that’s another one of Winchester’s famous uncles.
His mother’s father, his own father, his father’s father, his brothers and cousins … they’re all part of the Addy-Amo-Boye family of drummers.
Being Winchester is probably a bit like being born in a Kabuki family in how that art is a part of your everyday life, family ties and legacy.
But Winchester never makes you feel that he is different from you.
If anything, he makes you feel as though you have known him all your life, that maybe you can go visit him and his wonderful family in Ghana one day, and that he will make you feel welcome.
He has never had to actually say this. It is a feeling.
Not only is he obviously a talented musician, he is also sensitive to the person he is with _ what that person is trying to say and do _ and this makes him a very special artist.
I guess what I am saying is that you feel this understanding and respect.
This happens to be sadly rather rare.
Most people who are talented and intelligent are strong. And they become self-absorbed.
Winchester is accomplished in his own art, but he also has that magic of being able to make his art work in a way to enhance other people’s statements without compromising his own.
To feel complete as an artist, we ultimately need the Listener.
We say we are not afraid to be alone. But in the end we want to communicate and that is why we write/play music/paint/etc.
The artist you collaborate with is that first Listener.
Winchester makes me feel complete in this process of communication.
He also somehow makes me feel that I want to _ and that I must _ communicate more and more and more with more people, the whole world, anyone who will listen, anyone who will care, everyone, though I may find that may be no one at all except for Winchester.
Winchester has played at many places with his family. But he is still new in Japan and so he plays with a lot of people who aren’t rich or famous in small bars that are like holes filled with cigarette smoke for little money.
Sometimes this happens to great musicians.
And so once I said to him: you will be a star soon then you wouldn’t want to play with us.
And he looked me in the eye and said: No, that’s not true. If I am free, I will come and play.
This kind of conviction he has about his calling as an artist is basic and pure.
But it’s something we tend to forget with age.
He is right: We have to keep going, and we have to show up to play/write/paint.
If we start questioning that, if we can’t believe, then what are we doing to begin with?
For our reading in the video above, Winchester drove several hours from a concert he was performing with his students near Mount Fuji, and then drove all the way back after this 10 minute performance.
I am just amazed.
I am not sure if I would be able to do that.
I did not realize he was in Fuji until he arrived at our door.
He had just said on the phone earlier in the day: I am quite far, but I will be there.
And to make it all the more amazing, Winchester’s father has just died.
He will not go back to Ghana for the funeral but will keep playing music in Japan.

Story of Miu 11

Continued from previous entries:
Story of Miu 10
Story of Miu 9
Links to Story of Miu 8 and previous entries to where it all started.

___________

The details, when put together, make for a rather fascinating profile of a young man.
Maybe because I am a writer I am by nature intrigued by descriptions of things that people do that offer insight into human nature that writers see as a mission to explore.
I still don’t really know Yuga at all.
I only know what Miu told me.
Maybe she is telling only her side of what happened as people are apt to do.
And maybe she didn’t even really know him either.
The bits and pieces came slowly and gradually.
But as our conversation went on, the crimes, the shortcomings, the mistakes of Yuga came from her in torrents.
Yuga had another identity, Miu says.
He went to clubs to pick up women.
For this, he went by a false name, Ryuga, which still sounded enough like Yuga so that if someone called out the name _ someone who really knew who he was, who happened to be at the same club, the same party, or the same sidewalk, “Hey, Yuga!” _ the girl he was trying to seduce wouldn’t find out he had told her his false name, the lie, the other identity: The boy who wasn’t a poor musician at all but an up-and-coming recruit at a PR firm, who had money and on his path to fame.
“That is so sad,” Miu said to me, scoffing and sneering, although she was almost going to cry.
“I thought I came to Japan to find human relationships that were devoid of the separation of racism, to link with people in a way that wasn’t tainted by the barriers of racial stereotypes. I just wanted a man who would look at me and not see a Jap before he saw anything else.”
I touched her shoulder, pale and frail and trembling.
But nothing I could do or say was going to make Miu feel better.
When Yuga was Ryuga, when he wasn’t practicing with Miu and the rest of his band, when he wasn’t poring over his studies, he was talking to strange women as Ryuga in darkly deafening club after club, whispering strange nothings into their ears.

SuperMom with Winchester Nii Tete

SuperMom: A Poem for All Working Women With Children

Poetry by Yuri Kageyama
Kpanlogo by Winchester Nii Tete
Performance at the Pink Cow in Tokyo
June 8, 2008

SuperMom is the Mother in “The Terminator,” fearless, sinewy, a mother like no other.
SuperMom risks her life to save her child.
SuperMom risks her life to save the world.
SuperMom _ the mother of all mothers.
SuperMom, Mother, Mama, Imamin, Okaasan!
SuperMom is never found in kitchens barefoot and wears boots to march to work.
SuperMom doesn’t make obento.
SuperMom shops at Ichi-Maru-Kyu.
SuperMom _ the mother of invention.
SuperMom, Mother, Mama, Imamin, Okaasan!
SuperMom doesn’t gossip with other moms but makes her own money, pays tuition and buys you sneakers.
SuperMom doesn’t aspire to be on the cover of Nikkei Woman.
SuperMom just minds her keep.
SuperMom _ a motherfucking worker.
SuperMom, Mother, Mama, Imamin, Okaasan!
SuperMom endures, her womb red and heavy and big and open, wrenching out babies and seaweed and stench.
SuperMom spurts out curdled milk like a fountain in the desert.
SuperMom is the origin of origins.
SuperMom _ the bottom of the sea.
SuperMom, Mother, Mama, Imamin, Okaasan!
SuperMom teaches the primordial instinct of nurturing the species, the legacy of creation, the courage of the Artist.
SuperMom shows by example.
SuperMom leaves the message that nothing counts except Who You Are.
SuperMom _ the bottom of the earth.
SuperMom, Mother, Mama, Imamin, Okaasan!