Epilepsy Diagnosis

after, and closing with phrases from, Dave Bonta’s “Prayer
and Luisa A. Igloria’s “Border Studies: 18

A cameo lodged within the soft stuff
of the mind, Ben Franklin silhouette,
hair trapped with a ribbon. Innocuous,
until we are not watching; he begins
experiments, sends up kite and key,
he’s all about the flow of electricity,
he’s well grounded to the brain-stem.
I am made absent, undergo indelicate
adjustments of position, he turns my
ear to the shimmering world, floods
my eyes with a light rare as gin, my
head full of if
.

Sailing Stones

inspired by/after Dave Bonta’s poem “Death Valley” and an oil painting by Robert Rhodes titled “Monica alone, quietly reciting the rosary

Nothing absent-minded in the way the freezing weather
forms the fingers of divinity, each sailing stone
a bead, the midnight breeze a thread on which they

slide, dried mud caked and cracked: chapped skin
beneath a magnifying glass. Mala, rosary, prayer beads,
not Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist—before doctrines

and divisions, night-wind prayed the stones. Tourists
gather, film the still geology, geography of awe. Our
eyes can’t track the motion of these beads, ears have never

heard the words of corresponding prayers. Nothing absent-
minded, only other-minded, inaudible invocations we would
not understand. Racetrack Playa rosary—is this wildfire

a butter lamp, a votive lit for that ancient juniper once
buried at La Brea? Could the fault-line tremors be repeated
kneeling on some ground we have not recognized as holy?

Talking Drum

inspired by “Sweet exiled words: two poems by José Luis Appleyard” translated by Natalie d’Arbeloff

when we were gathering the bitter-
leaf and stopped to play, throw rocks
to coax the spirit of the old baobab
into generosity, beg it to drop one

of its itchy-covered pods down from
the heights that we might break it
open, feast upon sweet-sour powder-
coating on its seeds, when hot breeze

carried first phrase from the drum in
our direction, we would freeze, tilt
our heads to listen for the repeat,
dama gazelles we were, catching scent

upon the wind, waiting for the repeat,
confirmation and instruction, goatskin
rhythm telling us which way to run

goatskin scraped free of hair, scraped
to translucence, soft thick parchment
stretched upon a narrow-waisted body,
hollow carved of wood and secrets,

stretched and threaded with leather
laces waiting for the compression of
the drummer’s upper arm, vocal cords
to tighten, loosen, flex the speaking

surface so the striking mallet could
write words in the language of the drum
each phrase held a message, repeated
and repeated, tonal speech encoded

into total speech, decoded by the body
of each hearer, heads tilted to receive
and suddenly we are stotting, feet
inscribing jubilation in hot sands:

the chieftain’s daughter, she is to
be married, there will be a wedding,
there will be a feast, there will be
rice with black-eyed peas and chicken,

and we all are welcome, welcome, we
are all invited to come and offer
blessings, come and dance in circles
for their union, come and dance our

thanks to those who’ve gone before,
thanks for continuity, dance for them
a prayer for peace beneath their roof,

a welcome for the children yet to come


Note: The talking drum was still an active means of communication between and within villages when I was a child; Natalie’s translations brought back a sense of loss and longing, memories of listening to their messages, knowing their meanings as a child without remembering learning them. I chose the dama gazelle for this poem because it has become critically endangered in the Sahel due to modernization and loss of habitat.

Developments

Death transformed, eventually, through the course
of many dreams, his scythe divided, turned to talons,
his black cowled cloak to wings. His relentless pacing
became a gathering of fallen twigs of faith. He wove
a nest — it is within this that I rest, soul-embryo
encased in corporeal shell. When body becomes too
brittle, weakened, fragile to withstand the stretching
of my spirit, when it is no longer strong enough
to hold me, I will hatch. I am not yet fully formed
and ready, but these cracks no longer scare me.


After Luisa A. Igloria’s “Arguments with destiny: 21

Reflection

Don’t wrap your frame
in other fabrics, disguise
yourself with fig leaves,

don’t paint your face
before you face the world
in the morning; scrub it.

Don’t yield to pressure
to impress with who and
what you are; instead,

unlock the tinderbox
and find the spark, discover
what’s within you that’s

awaiting recognition. Take
your skeleton, grant it
permission to emerge

wearing no more than
flesh, remove the drapes
you’ve used to cover up

the mirror, release it
from its hook and tilt it,
for a moment dare

to catch your own
reflection, be lit by every
flicker and gleam.


After/inspired by the following poems on Via Negativa: “Arguments with destiny: 14” by Luisa A. Igloria, “False Idols” by Kristen-Berkley-Abbott, and “Portuguese error” by Oswald de Andrade, trans. Natalie d’Arbeloff.

Bamboo

poem ending with lines from Natalie d’Arbeloff’s
translation of “Motivo” by Cecília Meireles

Bamboo can be food, its tender shoots
stripped and swirled in flavorful hot
oils in a basin of well-seasoned steel.
It can be nourishing, bamboo.

Bamboo can be a habitat, a refuge
of tall green pillars, camouflage
safety, welcome shack with shade.
It can be sufficient home, bamboo.

Bamboo can be long tubes, dried
and cut, angled beneath the splashing
of the fountain or the roof, accepting
in its hollowness, directing water’s journey.
It can be a flowing pipe, bamboo.

Bamboo can be lumber, cut and dried
and tied, a fence to keep the garden
safe at home, a ladder for the beans
and roses climbing upward for the sun.
It can create a paradise, bamboo.

And yet, the ones that speak, when they
speak of bamboo, they do not talk of
new growth in loving terms, slanted braids
in glazed ceramic pots, their overlapping
angles secured in ribbon-gold —
it can be beautiful, bamboo —

but rather of a war, of daily sweat,
of stomping each new shoot
that emerges in the yard, of broken
mowers, of heavier metals, of
trying new solutions to repel
this invasive enemy, bamboo.

Nourishing, sufficient home,
a flowing pipe, a paradise,
this lucky-braided beautiful —
it is not welcome here, bamboo.

But those who listen can still
hear it whisper as it grows:

I sing because the moment exists
and my life is complete.

And one day I know that I’ll be mute:
— that’s all.

Society Rag

Black mustaches, black cravats,
suits patterned after leopard-skin
and lined in golden silk. When
the Northern flickers fledge, they
dress in flashy uniforms, band
performance and they all play
drums, take deep-sweep bows
mid-flight, shout wacka-wacka!

The pileated’s a traditionalist,
still wears a scarlet cap with
matching chin-strap, formal
suit in black with gleaming white
lapels. Grand and grandiose,
but filled with noblesse oblige,
he leaves his older dwelling to be
leased by lady wood duck, she
needs the lofty safety to incubate
her clutch, but doesn’t have
the beak for excavation.

She has a yellow-bellied neighbor,
but he rarely disturbs her with his
intermittent mews. His work’s
sporadic, an arrhythmia induced
by breaks for sips, he’s always
in his cups, so much he wears a bib —
and also a red cap, but beyond
that, he doesn’t match: checked
coat atop a khaki-yellow shirt.

For fashion trends, you have
to look to red-heads — him or her,
they are identical in style, same
haut designer fond of high-gloss
color-block. Or, for a bit of modern
flare that’s such a daring statement
it’s hard to tell if it is fashion or
rebellion: check out the red-bellied,
rose tattoo bare beneath slick
zebra jacket, Manic Panic hair.

And finally, there’s those cousins —
brothers? — Hairy, Downy, not so
flashy, not quite twins. Hard to tell
who’s who among them, they have
costumed up, them and their ladies,
as Pierrot and Pirouette, the men show
but a single patch of red upon their
heads, and even that is in the back:
if you should surprise one playing
the catalpa, it will turn to face you,
freeze — and if you blink, without that
red as evidence of its existence, it
blends in and vanishes completely.

All you have left is speculation as
to if it’s gone or present. Just like
the legendary uncle of his pileated
nibs, the ivory-billed enigma, holy
grail of ornithology, rumored, sought,
and sightings not believed. But still
remains the inconclusiveness,
the hope, the lurking question:

Is absence of evidence
evidence of absence?


In response to, and ending with a line from, The Morning Porch.

Rosetta

Only a purple line, a single stroke,
sweep of frictionless calligraphy divides
the night from day, the land from sky.

Each morning, you inscribe the message
left before your door, decipher what’s
been written in the avian, depicted

in the characters of birds: swallows hawk
insects in invisible script, graceful swirls
of Arabic. Downy woodpeckers: steady Morse.

Last night, tornado warnings.
Today, a single trumpeter swan
flies south against the wind.


After The Morning Porch: May 28, May 30, & May 31.

Big Robe

We picked the cotton, pulled the soft white tufts
when they erupted, piled them in the grass baskets
we carried on our heads. First Thursday market,
we walked with covered baskets toward the river.

Long walk, but only once a month, First Thursday.

My friend’s mother sold the cotton to the master
tailor, and when she left to trade gossip with other
women, we stayed in the shade of the tailor’s
make-shift shelter, mouths silently agape, watched

as he’d take a puff of cotton, touch tips of two

fingers to his tongue, pinch and twist, roll the first
drawn fibers, form a cord. When it had reached
a hand’s-length, he’d secure it to a small rock, lift
the puff in one hand, wind the stone up, let go

and let the rebound spin turn the cotton into thread.

Another Thursday market-day and long past harvest,
but we still came, sat silently in the tailor’s shade.
Those stone-spun threads were now affixed, their
ends knotted to a double-heddle, and he wove them

into even strips, long long and precisely narrow:

each the measured width of his thumb and fingertip.
And another market, still months later, we watched
him push a steel needle through the edges of two
strips held together, form a seam, each stitch was

measured, patient, and when pulled taut, invisible.

Two years of First Thursdays we borrowed shade
and watched as our harvest that he’d purchased
gradually became babba riga, big robe, a fine
and formal garment for a man of great importance,

then embellished: swirls, knives to grace the chest.

Two years of a man’s life spun and woven, stitched
into the fabric of these robes. Two years of a man’s
life, two months blessed embroidery, our cotton.


In response to / inspired by Via Negativa: “Thinned” and “Agape.” For more on Hausa
babba riga robes, see the Powerhouse Museum Collection.

proud women in bright wrappers

middle of dry season, nomadic traders passing through,
their children (no taller than we were) driving drought-
thinned cattle up toward the plateau, and we would
follow after at a distance with our razorblades in hand,

look for gems, butterflies pressed flat by passing
hooves, incise the dry clay beneath and lift them,
save them on small trays, carry them to an artist who
affixed them to white paper — or, for those largest

and most perfect, crushed black velvet in a frame —
collage them into women, the women we hoped
we’d grow to be: proud women in bright wrappers
with large headscarves, grace and balance carrying

bundled firewood, calabashes of gathered greens,
clay pots of water on their heads, women with
their sleeping children snugged tight behind their
shoulders, women at the mortar pounding yam


A childhood memory prompted by an entry at The Morning Porch. To see samples of this type of wing collage, search for “vintage African butterfly art women” in Google – Images.