The Melancholy of Mechagirl

And like him, I also cried out to my father:

Wait, wait!

when he thoughtlessly drew a knife from the kitchen drawer

to slice the fruit in quarters.

It would be nice to think that he paused,

listening to my sugar-buried exhortation,

that I sprang from the bed of wet gold

in a helmet of antlers and a bamboo kusazuri.

If I had leapt from the honey-bed and kissed my mother’s ear,

then I, too, might have given bean-dumplings

to the monkey,

the pheasant,

the spotted dog.

We might have gone together, then,

trampling the grass with filial feet.

We might have built a raft of palm fronds, held fast

by a paste of betel and coconut,

and sailing across the water,

we would have slaughtered in seven clean strokes

the giants of Ogre Island,

whose flesh was red,

and blue,

and black.

I would have brought home to them the magic hammer,

which produced gold whenever it struck the earth.

Perhaps the peach-musculature muffled my voice,

or perhaps their neighbor, who had lived alone

in her little room for 50 years,

was playing the piano again,

her foot death-heavy on the reverberating pedal—