Month: July 2017

The HuffPost article says all you have to do
is manifest your desires to the universe, in order
for it to grant them. If you asked me what my greatest
wish would be right at this moment, it would be hard
to put my finger on one specific thing. For instance
I might say Why couldn’t I be like the Vietnamese
or Chinese uncles who I know work as cooks in two
side-by-side Asian restaurants in our old neighborhood?
They can make even mid-grade tuna look awesome
and they have great knife skills— I’ve seen them
at work behind the sushi bar and the barbecue grill—
and when they come out to smoke in the back parking lot
they still know how to do the Asian squat but they each
drive away in almost identical new Mercedes Benz models.
As my late father used to say, not only must you be
the picture of industry; you’ve also got to have
something to show for your pains. Even the girl
who cuts my hair has a kidney-shaped swimming pool
in her yard, and plans at least two vacations a year
someplace warm where she and her amigas drink
cocktails dressed with paper umbrellas. All
the bright young things are doing that moue
or lip pucker, tucking just a little bit of shirt
into the tops of their waistbands, with Coron
or the Eiffel Tower or a castle in Prague visible
in the background. The message seems to be:
I’ve got to make my intentions clearer, in order
not to run out of time. Instead of windfall, ask
for funds to plug the gaping holes in these bank
accounts. Instead of utility, ask for visas
and plane tickets for family. Instead of some fame
and fortune, ask for manuscripts to get picked up,
for an NEA grant, for a phone call from the MacArthur
Foundation. Instead of good health and long life,
ask for clear results in next Friday’s biopsy exam.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Jailer.

The lawyer said, a petition for status
might not take as long as it used to
back in the day. But at the same time,
no one knows; things could change.

Isn’t it great not to have to worry
about how long you can continue to stay
in your apartment, find work, attend
school? Your first landlady threw

cigarette butts from the street
onto your veranda. She thought you
were the one up all night, flicking
menthol wrappers and dead

smokes into the darkness.
It gets old fast, this game of being
mistaken for someone else and their
misdemeanors. The last landlord

mentioned casually that his tenant
before you kept things scrupulously
clean. You wondered if that had
anything to do with the quarter

inch film of green scum you found
across the entire refrigerator top.
It took you a good part of the after-
noon to scrape it away with water

and bleach. Where you come from, the boys
on every street corner could polish
the most miserable shoe to a high shine.
In pouring rain, aunts and grandmothers

take up their stick brooms, vigorously sweep
rainwater from their thresholds and out
into the street— as if tossing back
at the sky its audacious surplus.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Proving the rule.

Attendants hold out trash bags in their hands
and announce that all magazines and earphones

must be returned along with the peanuts
and coffee. Did you think you could take

any of this with you for free? Remember
the lawyer friend of the famous one?

She wrote to say she is So sorry, but
it is apparent you can’t get on with your life

for your misplaced anger. Life is full
of disproportionate injustice. For instance,

the cost of just one ounce of black winter truffle
is $60, while sixty-four ounces of incandescent

grey caviar goes for $17,000. I read about a food
dehydrator that’s been invented, which can make

everything from grains to fruit to insects taste
like chips. A man shot and killed an 820 pound

feral hog. The carcass dangled all through
the humid night from a tree, like some kind

of warning. Isn’t that what every trophy means,
stuffed, stripped, its dark nailed to the wall?

 

In response to Via Negativa: Whole hog.

Philibert Commerçon: Buginvillæa, Genera Plantarum (A.L. de Jussieu, 1789); and Jeanne Baret, genus Baretia (Turraea)

Heterophyllus: having the foliage leaves of more than one form on the same plant or stem (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

I think about those fused blooms, pink and white,
deep in their pockets of green; how they papered

an entire side of my childhood home that is gone.
How they rustled like whorls of dry parchment

in summer, and slicked themselves into tongues,
the better to taste the true vernacular of each

punishing monsoon. A woman botanist first
observed them: she, companion and lover

to the official scientist on a voyage circumnavigating
the world. Later records show she disguised herself

as a man, as no woman had been allowed on this journey.
There is a print of her in striped pantaloons, loose

jacket, a jaunty cap. She was of course discovered.
And made to pay the cost. To mark all that I’ve also

lost and gained, I wanted cuttings to plant
along one side of my fence. I remember

their tensile stems spiked with thorns. How I sat
as a bob-haired girl on the porch, spitting

watermelon seeds at the earth. Years later,
asked if I would give up the thing I loved best

for a man: something in me tore and quivered.
Something in me adhered, even as it uprooted.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Where is the painting that used to hang
in the musty hallway of our first home?

Which dead president was immortalized
there in glimmering oils? How many gold

buttons marched down his uniform? Where
did planes land after the airport closed,

after the runway’s narrow lip jutted
into the ravine? I remember a gardener

named Jose, pretending to catch a roach
and pinch it between two slices of bread

at midday. We ran away then spent long
afternoons sliding through wild grass

in the foothills. Who can tell what hand
shook the only world we knew like castanets?

Their wooden clatter is like the sound
buildings make as they shatter into a fine

pebbly rain. Friday evenings, months after
a woman took her own life in our home,

a taxi would pull up at the gate, looking
for his passenger. Dragonflies skim

green surfaces of pond water. Five decades
after; and still, I don’t know why.

Trudging back toward the depths,
in that brief space of awareness,

I am assailed by charred smells
of salted meat and roasted corn;

and again, I feel the tug of my
hungers: I want to make room

for something other than fate.
I’ve gotten so good at hoisting

the burdens— my shoulders are worn
to the blade and my physical therapist

shakes his head, pronouncing me hopeless.
Natura naturata, wrote Spinoza: Things

happen only because of Nature and its laws.
In the valley, someone is setting off

fireworks. Dogs chained to fences startle,
send up the jagged froth of their voices.

They know it isn’t nature that’s tethered
them from their own nature; perhaps

they want to crest the hill I climb so often.
And like me, keep going. To never come back.