Photos of San Francisco by Annette Borromeo Dorfman
A book party
MY POEM “ode to the Stroller” got published in TOKYO POETRY JOURNAL Vol. 5, dedicated to the Beat Poets January 2018.
THE BOOK PARTY AT OL TOKYO
37-10 Udagawa-cho
Shibuya, Tokyo
7 p.m. SAT Jan. 27, 2018.
Photos of the reading by John Matthews
I read this poem with my YURICANE spoken-word band: Winchester Nii Tete (percussion), Kouzan Kikuchi (shakuhachi) and Hirokazu Natsuaki (cello), crossing borders so sounds, genres, cultures, people come together in a performance with no score but all soul.
Motherhood poems are usually square or oppressive and so many women don’t like to write about motherhood. I chose pushing the stroller as a metaphor to depict motherhood in all its proper liberated glory. This happens to be in San Francisco because that is where I had my son and I pushed him around on strollers a lot. But it can be about any mom anywhere. The point of this poem is that it is location-specific and so it takes you on a journey, not only where the stroller went but also in our minds and our path of life like a movie.
We dedicate our performance to all mothers, including Mother Earth herself, and, of course, all the children.
ode to the stroller
a poem by Yuri Kageyama
we zip weightless like silent angels
up and down San Francisco hills
running on the mother of all energy
greener than solar
rolling rolling rolling
with laughter
cream acid rock ‘n’ rolling
lightning dazzling wheels
gara-gara-gara-gara
teethers jangling dangling dancing
going mad on strangle-free rubbery ribbons
up and down the Avenues
J-town, Clement Street
Golden Gate Park
Museum of Modern Art
we are singing:
“Ouma no oyako wa nakayoshi koyoshi
itsudemo issho ni pokkuri pokkuri aruku”
perfume wind in our hair
springing over potholes
not even stopping just for breast feeds
connected as one through this magical machine
me pushing
you riding
the Lamborghini of strollers
the Gundam of strollers
the little train that could of strollers
up up up into the joyous clouds
zooming wheeeeee
down slurping slopes
around swervacious curves
we are one
yes, we are one
tied in the past with our
umbilical cord
and
even in death
in our dreams
This version of my reading was recorded at Jackson’s Garage in Tokyo, with Hirokazu Suyama Jackson on drums, Yuuichiro Ishii on guitar and Hiroshi Tokieda on bass.
The poem is about young motherhood some time back, but I wrote this poem recently.
The feelings remain the same, eternal:
