Ryoko Sekiguchi

This bit from Two Markets, Once Again translated by Sarah Riggs has Sapphic overtones, especially given the italicized fragments that follow.

The texts of our forgotten sisters, deformed in girlish songs, fan out in a flight of diaphanous shadows. Already this reading act far from that of constructing of edifice, even by reading out loud they couldn't provoke a city into being, and from this market, however much we might wish it, it's not easy to step into another text. Migrating being only possible within images. Tossing, the flat surface so lively, a sea where to dive in doesn't exist, the cliff being a means to fly and not to fall; in whirling air currents, we would come across words and little agile consonants, and mark each one of them with fluorescent signals akin to the traces of kisses.

A mellow voice ... my tongue ... rasping ... on their soft cushions ... ephemeral ... Attis, Lydia, golden-outlined lips ... saffron colored ... by the dew ... born away ... of Artemis .. from the Phrygian lands ...

Ryoko Sekiguchi concludes this gathering of prose pieces with a paragraph that sums up what it means to inhabit a construction of words, or rather marks, which being read bring a place into being.

Living in this place, with eyes open, sure to stay here longer, we have written texts by pencil and hand in our notebook. So it is that we can say: the market, present from the beginning of our reading, begins finally to exist in this place, once again.

There is more to discover in this small book and the sisterhood extends in many directions.

And so for day 781
01.02.2009