Sawako Nakayasu was born in Japan and raised in the US. She studied Literature/Writing and Music Composition at UC San Diego, then taught for three years at the Grauer School in Encinitas, CA. Her interests in text, music, and modern dance have led to several performance art works, including Tending the Keep—a full-length show concerning marriage and hockey. Her poetry has appeared in Chain, Key Satch(el), Tinfish, and Interlope.
Working Notes
I work mostly in poetry because it claims to be neither fiction nor non-fiction, because it acknowledges the gap between what really was or is, and what is said about it. Is the woman really in a box? It depends on who you ask, how they see it, or what constitutes a box. I like to claim that all of my poems are "true."
The balcony poems arrived out of an unforeseen life-interruption in Europe, where I was intrigued by the dual inside/outside-ness of balconies, and how poetry exists in a similar place—inside and/or outside people, actions, events. Jenny Holzer said something like, "I love my mind when it is fucking the cracks of events." I think that's where the juiciest poems are.
Moving Balcony in Tokyo
Pretty voices they have,
well-packaged in airport speakers:
THE END OF THE WORLD IS AHEAD.
PLEASE WATCH YOUR STEP.
1
1 Hakoirimusume: 2 literally, daughter-in-a-box; upon birth, said female is squarely protected by her parents by means of a figurative and ornamentally beautiful box, to be untied on the date of delivery to her first and only husband. Otherwise, if such daughter were to get a job, the box would accompany her to the workplace each day. In this case, her box is a speaker—and we envision a small Japanese woman inside, repeating with her lovely lovely voice.
2 The term "hakoirimusume" has been deleted from the final draft of this poem.
On the Balcony Missing a Friend
(with Beethoven string quartet #16, Opus 135, III: E. Cantante Tranquillo)
1. Take away glass from Empire State
2. Take away glass from windshield
( Rainex™ remains)
3. Take away glass from underfoot
(S & G song remains, mumbling the soles of her shoes)
4. Take away related words like shattering, crack, reflection
("little piece" remains)
5. Take away glass door
(no possible re-entry stamp)
6. Take the poem away from sight
(remember to reach out and touch some)
Neatly, I write "phone number" on a Post-it™ note and attach it to the above list. In fact, I remain hanging by a cat, a line, a piece of road stretching San Francisco, San Diego.