Category Archives: Poems & poem-like things

It’s almost spring, and I am putting
a large box of things together to send
away across the ocean in a container ship
with many other boxes just like this one.

We call these balikbayan boxes— and we
fill them to the brim (they’re packed and taped,
not weighed, by volume) with every imaginable
first world desire: chocolate, clothes and shoes

bought at various sales throughout the holidays,
books for nieces and nephews; coffee, processed
ham, brined and pressed into teardrop-shaped tins;
liter bottles of shampoo, purse-size samples

of scents and lotions and oils; candy, pain-
killers, cans of tuna and corned beef and Spam.
Strips of masking tape and markers help
to designate which items will go to which

relatives and friends back home. I know
that what I really want to send can’t fit
inside this cardboard box— And so from time
to time I’ll stop to lean against the kitchen door,

survey the goods strewn across the table:
despite the labels, unsure of their destination
as I am uncertain of what real purchase
I have over the things in this world.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What had he saved, at the close
of his life, that he might have left
as a bequest? We found out only

after his death: despite his long
career in law, how scrupulous, how
fraught with superstition the lengths

he went to avoid the writing of a will,
or such grave considerations of the end:
a bank account his widow had no real

knowledge of, with one last retirement
deposit; the neat and mostly unused
stack of blank checks (he favored cash)

tucked in a corner of the sock drawer.
Somehow I can’t remember more
than the questions that now come

out of that time. They crowd upon
the present, which today seems
cloudless and untrammelled, clear

blue shot through with loose coins
of sunshine though winter’s breath
suspends its shadow from every branch.

If you can’t take it with you, what is
this lifetime of working and making do,
of putting others’ needs before your own;

and nights of sleepless worry, counting
the days from one paycheck to the next?
The clock in the hallway whirrs

and hidden levers scroll the hands
across its ivory face. Its music
is also a counting-out, a measuring

of the remaining distances between
the ache of all that wants so much
to be fulfilled, to be disbursed.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Buttonhole: wound, opening trellised over
with such careful stitches. If the edging
is even and well-spaced, and the knot hidden
from view, the garment is practically knighted.
Tell me about frog closures, keyhole backs,
pin-tucks that seam close and sigh open;
the patient work of the foot, the hours
pressed on the treadle. Romance of voile,
the pragmatism of cotton, the tensile
wisdom of wool and lace. At the mall,
trendy with mirrors and mannequins:
a thousand blemishes sparkle, but
everything is hungry for more.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The eye of a needle is tiny. The threader’s wire hooks a whip of floss and passes it through the door of a wool-gray sky. If I were a camel, would I have known where the fissure lay? The word heather means variegated, shaded off in parts, whimsy not cut out of the same sheen or sheet or cloth. Like how some dreams are stippled and some are plain. Like how some joys are miles and miles of gossamer, unfazed by the idea of seams. I drive past neighborhoods in the afternoons, as children are just starting to walk home from school. Brick houses like rust-colored skeins line the streets, flagstone walks edged by monkey grass. Let me not forget what I’ve always wanted, so hard its edges strain against the remnants of fabric scraps.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Is there dew on the grass, are they tears
of a lover that time forgot?

Is there milk in the cup, fresh
skin formed on the nourishing fat?

Is the seed worked free of rock,
and has it brought its tattered shirt?

Is the grout in the bathroom stall
now a legible trail?

Is the pear tree warm or cold? Beneath its arms,
does it wish for a reader of long Russian novels?

Is the sill wide enough for a window
to rest, for a wing to roost?

Is the woman headed toward the train
station, does she hear the warning bell?

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Rock

On the other side
of the world, a nun
ponders rain that is
beginningless—
which makes me remember
the first of many games
that women in the family
would play with every new
baby: close, open, close,
open— by turns
the fist is soft as new
paper, then layered flint
cropped from a lunar crater.

Paper

When I pried
the orange’s clear
segment from its rind
and mesh of membrane,
a spray of volatile oil
arced into the air.

Scissors

Loggers clear trees along
the powerline to make way
for a new parking structure
at the mall. You
could not see the shore
from here— fish in nets
a kind of dappled wealth,
even a little change dropped
back into the water.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Some children are pounding leaves
on the stones— slippery
leaves of the hibiscus, a stray

petal streaked with coral. A little
scatter of detergent and water, a bent
piece of wire— and late afternoon

light floods through a prism
of bubbles. The blur in the road
is the dust raised by feet rushing

then jumping into packing boxes.
World of makeshift joys: thunk
of a fruit stone meeting its sling-

shot target, and from an upstairs
window, the ice cream bell sound
of a typewriter carriage return.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

There are these questions
arising as if out of nowhere,

warm-blooded and full as the wind’s
bodied passage— That morning,

for instance: when the mother,
oracular, slumped to the floor

after heaving handfuls of still-
green bananas into the air like missiles.

And the stalk from which they were gleaned
quivered against the doorframe, like a bow

with which arrows had just been launched.
What word from the mother-in-law

hung in the air preceding this
onslaught? My ear quickens

to the humming of bees in the backyard,
radio signals of sticky love multiplied

in each golden cell. Some things pass
without saying from woman to woman:

shreds of song, pennants
of explosive radiance.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.