Mariko Sumikura won the First Prize for Poetry

Love of an embroidery master

By Mariko Sumikura

Channels of Venice the mature capital

Embrace everything of prosperity and fall

To look like a complicated design of lace

An embroidery master’s

New technique, “Stitch in the air”

Detached from the spell of the embroidery frame 

She wished free love too much

One needle and a thread

Gave birth to a design of

Geometric love

For a white thread is surely tied

To the grand channel

For a white thread is surely led

Into bottomless sea

They must meet in time

A line crossing a line and tied,

The knots become a square to join

Two gondolas

Nestling close to each other

Oh, drops ahead of the oar

Like immortal words in a poem.