Sawako Nakayasu was born in Japan and raised bilingually in the US. She writes poetry, prose, and performance text, translates from Japanese to English, and is currently working on an ant-based book, as well another not-fiction book. Her books include Nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she, (Quale Press) and So we have been given time Or, (Verse Press). She edits Factorial, which features contemporary Japanese poetry in translation, as well as the Translation section for HOW2. More information is available here.
PHOTO CREDIT: Shoko Kashima

Distance of the heat between now (here) and hockey (yesterday at the park), as measurable in units of body heat or lack thereof. The temperatures vary, as does the distance in relation of each body that has taken any short sliver of space between here (now) and yesterday (around the time that hockey would have happened). These temperatures include cousins of various degree and blood connect, parents of geographical approach, siblings and loves and complete strangers. Some very close bodies arrive only in the form of some very few words, while other very strange bodies arrive in physically intrusive proportions. And where is the hockey in that.

Later, several train rides.
Still later, a dance performance.

The hockey in that is the light malleability of the shifting proximities between very familiar and unfamiliar bodies, new, new, old. Very old, very close. Bodies carry heat together, at times in the form of love, at times in the form of very short-lived love, or new. Distance of time between bodies when moving, when not moving, when moving a small portion of surrounding air. When enough air is moved, that is enough to call it hockey, and when enough of the air has cooled, the game is long since over.

© Sawako Nakayasu 2006.