Miharu Yano
Three Paintings
Grandmother’s gaze is avoidant、 lively in motion but unmoving. Along her eye sockets, nose bridge, and shrunken mouth: Parallel lines. Lines are wrinkles on a human face. Beautiful wrinkles in stillness. Forehead and tip of nose reflect age. Neck wants to reveal light. Decolletage is unwrinkled. Affixed youthful features alluring like a deceptive manticore.
An empty museum floats, while a quiet lake suffocates. Quieter crowds are quiet. I shift to escape her gaze. Distracting conversations, distracting footsteps. Voices enter in foreign tongue.
Art about art about art about art. Empty Museum is a quiet lake, floating, suffocating. Crowded Museum is puddled water with sanctity lost. It morphs into a muddy annoying thing.
The back room draws me. The foreseen room. Oil still lifes in droves. Fruit after fruit. Special fruit preserved for centuries. No one stops to appreciate; fruit is just fruit after fruit.
I take plums out of a bowl. Rot underneath. Bowl rotting with wasted fruit. Proof of life. Decades of decay coat my fingers. I scoop. Two hands. I observe. Half fresh, half putrid. Scents swirl and solidify, lodges in my throat like a pit.
Three Paintings; Redux
Eye line avoid I eye I see. Woman move same time move not. Woman eyehole, noseleave, swellmouth: praise line draw. Line human space face beauty. Woman sex still face. Forehead nose point light oppose shoot. Oldyoung woman sex part position add. Apparition like less deceive spirit.
Sky beauty craft building float, quiet lake closed breath. Quiet gather quiet. Oldyoung woman avoid eye line. Meet talk mind scatter, foot sound mind scatter. Hear outsidecountry word, beauty craft building speak.
Art art art art. Sky beautycraft building quiet watersurface float, closed breath. Mix rough beautycraft building water, base arrive water hold god holy miss. Human contact dirtymud suffer intervene drop.
Eye point deep part room pull cram. Before measure room. Wall oil next next fruit thing draw. How world period preserve existence special different fruit thing. No stand stop mirror praise human. Fruit just fruit behind fruit.
Vessel plum hand take. Rot down. Rot lose vessel. Proof position. Number hundred year measure rot finger. Both hand. See know. Half measure vivid, half measure bitter tea color. Mix waft mix smell mistake swallow cram seed throat back stuff. Stay.
Miharu Yano is a poet and translator from Tokyo, Japan. They were the former Coeditor-in-Chief of Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation and hold an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa. They are currently pursuing an MFA in poetry at the University of Notre Dame and are an Assistant Editor at Action Books. Their work can be read or are forthcoming from action poetry, ballast, 91st Meridian, and elsewhere.