benjaminteicher.com – freelance writer

The temperature rose in our flat, hotter even, than the 40-odd red faced, spherical celciuses that danced around heads, puffing their steaming air all over us and in our direction.

So we escaped to the State Library, an edifice of the state that is disarmingly cool and inviting. Chilly inside, like the personal offices of a South East Asian statesman (for they have internalised colonial myths that connect laziness with humidity and heat).

And I selected a volume of Haiku, printed at the height of the old empire, spilling its pages like so many crisp syllables.

I learned of the history of the form, and found this to be my sultry favourite, very suited to the weather:

Koibito wo Omo-

Okie mitsu
Nete mitsu kaya no
Hirosa kana

Longing for My Sweetheart

I sit up or lie down and yet,
How large is the mosquito-net!
By Ukihashi (a poetess)

Here now are a few that I wrote, so taken by the form was I, that I might have been a 90’s yuppie, clothed in kimono, trimming bonzai, practicing calligraphy, rolling sushi and so forth:

Broken Skin

A peach bursts its skin
And spills out all of its life
Into the fruit bowl.

Starry-eyed

Cold light in my cell.
It burns my eyes, catches dust:
Now planets, now stars.

Glow

Summer’s sun light burns
Now not seeing light that shines
lower than before.