marriage « Yuri Kageyama

DIAMOND RING a poem by YURI KAGEYAMA

DIAMOND RING
a poem by Yuri Kageyama

That ring
Solitaire
That glistening rock
Magical
Probably stolen from Africa
No matter
Broken promises
Please marry me
Sitting on a velvety
Cushion
Cartier Tiffany’s
Harry Winston
Van Cleef & Arpels

After the young woman my son just broke up with
That young woman who played the violin
Asked me to go with her
To the clinic to get an abortion
I give her my grandmother’s diamond ring
The only diamond ring I’d ever owned
You can do whatever you want with it
Throw it away, pawn it away,
No, no, no, I can’t take this, she says
No, no no, I want you to have it, I say

With the passing of years
We outgrow our fetishes
I wonder if she still plays the violin
I don’t wonder about the ring

hating weddings

I’ve never liked weddings. I find them frightening.
Weddings are a very expensive performance designed to present an image of a social category called “married couple” that is proper and desirable and safe.
People spend a lot of time planning this performance, putting together slide shows of their childhood, picking out a package of gifts of porcelain and other knickknacks no one wants (though some couples have gotten smarter and instead give a catalogue so guests can pick out what they want but there is really nothing in the catalogue you want either), lining up a list of people to give speeches (the boring ones by bosses and former teachers, the teary goofy ones by friends) or put on horrible amateur acts (that should stay in the karaoke box where they belong).
It is a transition into adulthood _ the straight life.
It is a capitulation to the social definitions of Husband, Wife, Marriage, Man, Woman, Life, Career, Success.
It is often an opportunity for a woman to be the star for once, defined by an alleged beauty in absurd formulaic outfits (white dress, red kimono, etc.) so people can sigh and say oooh, how pretty she is, with the understanding that as she ages she can never quite be as nice-to-look at (i.e., socially valuable) as she is on that blessed day.
To negate or even question any of these definitions of what happens at a wedding so carefully orchestrated at considerable costs would be totally un-Japanese.
Love or whatever it is that happens that culminates in marriage is highly individualistic, private and spiritual.
But you’d never know it from watching the couple descend from a gondola covered with fumes and walk around lighting candles at tables decked with weird flowers and funny food.
Weddings usually show where people are really at _ in the end _ even if they have claimed for years to be more liberated.
They may say they are doing it for their parents.
It is frightening because it means that in the end we can never win against all these definitions not only because they are so powerful as dictated by society, but because they are so close to people’s deepest emotions and values (which what doing it for your parents means).
They are growing up.
They are getting married.
They are leaving me behind.

Haiku Taxi

Recently, I ran into a cab driver who was a haiku poet.
He read me his haiku about Girls’ Day dolls sitting in the darkness where the fragrance of peach blossoms was wafting.
He also said his best poems are the ones he thought were duds while those he thought came out well were never very good.
During our conversation, he also talked about how he gave gifts to his most loyal customers, who called him to pick them up all the time, including stained glass works his wife made.
His wife taught stained glass, and she could fix works her students left behind, saving on costs for those gifts.
I asked him to compose haiku then-and-there with the words, “stained glass.”
He told me that even though “stained glass” in Japanese (su-te-n-do-gu-ra-su) is a phrase composed of seven syllables, you can make haiku that’s seven-seven-five, not just five-seven-five, so that “stained glass” could be the first, or the second, line.
You learn something everyday, especially from cab drivers.
But he said groaning he couldn’t think of haiku on stained glass offhand.
He felt shy, he confessed, about writing haiku whose subject matter involved his wife.
I told him to please come up with one until we meet again.
I have yet to run into him, but meanwhile I have written haiku inspired by stained glass!

stained glass
nudging color into light
my wife’s fingers

stained glass
hikari wo someru
tsuma no yubi