Month: October 2017

This afternoon a box arrives in the mail;
it reeks of the distinct perfume of guavas.
I know what they are because my friend
in California has told me to expect them.
And they have a particular smell: a little
like passionfruit, a little flowery.
She picked them from the tree in her yard:
abundance of sweet pink flesh in green jackets.
On one corner of the flat rate box, she printed
Perishable. Only two or three are smashed, within
the folds of foam padding. I wash them in the sink
and cut them up, scooping out the seeds. They simmer
over half an hour in a pot with water, sugar. Now
they are fruit butter, which I can smear on a piece
of toast or a cracker. Does any of what I do
really keep the fruit from rotting sooner,
the mouth from curiosity or hunger? No matter
how many gods I’ve learned from, all my life
there’s always been someone who thinks I’m
an impostor: how do I know what I know, and
do I even have the language to speak of it?
Long after heat has changed the fruit, a well
of odor lingers in the air. We like to ask
about emptiness, about what we think
couldn’t possibly be there— forgetting
there can be different forms for things.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Everywhere I look there’s so much accumulated life
around us: deeds and papers, hundreds of books;

shoes and sweaters, assorted pots and pans.
Too many coffee mugs, ceramic plates bought

because something in the swirled green glaze
spoke to that deep need for beauty besides

the thing’s functionality: and also the hunger
that never is appeased. After the popcorn

and chips are gone, only crumbs; but at the bottom
of the bowl, wreathed letters spelling “Fill Me”

— just as, no matter how the days swell, it seems
I’m always running out of time. How will I ever

finish reading all the stories, the poetry? I read
the first page in the store, fall in love, pay, bear

my small new treasure away. I touch the folded dress
worn once at a daughter’s wedding, and never again;

the soft woven wrap brought back from foreign travels
by a friend. I want to wind it around me and lie down

as if spent. But also, I want to be one among a crowd,
come to raise our arms and push paper lanterns with tiny

flames flickering in their hearts up toward the indigo
sky, as we release our breaths at the same time.

I still want to live as if every small thing mattered
all the time, even if I know nothing can be ours to keep.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Collector.

In third grade, for a genealogy project,
I came home with a sheet on which was pre-
printed a simple family tree, and questions:
what were the names of my grandparents
on either side? when were they born,
what did they do, when did they die?
On mother’s side, I knew how Lorenzo,
her father, left his farm at nineteen
and came to the city for work. He was
a cook for four years in Baguio at a hotel
built in 1909; my daughter and I stayed there
when we visited in the summer of 2015.
His first wife was Filomena— I never saw
her picture, but her name sounded like flowers.
She died young of a heart attack, from news
of her brother’s death during the war.
His second wife was Victorina; visiting us
in my childhood, she brought with her a warm
tobacco smell that clung to her skirts;
when she sat in a dining chair she liked
to draw up her knees and eat with her hands.
After the war, Lorenzo went into business
with a friend and put up two small barbershops,
one of them named Lucky and the other, Symphony.
I never knew about Lucky, but I do have a dim
memory of Symphony: the smell of shaving foam
and hot towels, the men tipping up their chins
at the blade’s approach. Little piles of hair
gathered at the base of each chair, bright
red-white-and-blue striped helixes revolving
in the barber’s pole outside the door.
No one could tell me much about my grand-
father on the other side— least of all
my tightlipped father. Only his name, Felix;
how he was father’s father, but not my aunt
Sofia’s. Father’s mother Irene stayed with us
part of the year. She never liked my mother,
poor farmer’s daughter. At the end of her life,
bedridden, it was only my father’s name she
called out in the night. It was never
him but my mother who had to bring water,
the chamberpot, a change of sheets.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Sandman.

(next section in this series; a partly found poem)

Written on water: what describes a debt that will
in all likelihood never be paid back.
Meaning when someone borrows money or goods you sigh,
knowing that may be the last you’ll see of it.
Meaning a ledger of blue-green lines, always moving.
Meaning erasure; meaning hiding or wavering.

That joke about how many islands there are,
depending on whether it’s high or low tide.
If it could never be written in the first place,
what is it that’s erased?
Should you leave town, change your name?
Write on the envelopes that come
in the mail: Return to sender?

60-70% of the body’s weight is water.
12 gallons per day sustains the average person’s
water needs— including washing, bathing, cooking.
In third world countries, more than half
the population has no access to clean water.

It is well known that one could die
of thirst.There are also cases of death
from water intoxication.
In 2007 a woman died after drinking more
than 6 liters of water in 3 hours.
It was for a contest called “Hold Your Wee
for a Wii,” sponsored by a radio station.
The prize would have been a Nintendo game console.

Mostly women and children spend more than an aggregate
of 200 million hours per day collecting water for their families.
One pail in each hand. A length of cloth twisted into a ring
to help carry a jug or basin on the head.
Training for these things can start as young as 5.
There are dances involving the balancing of glasses
of water on each open palm, and one on the head.
Also, fire might substitute for water—
a votive, a flaming bowl.

The cameras are waiting.
Don’t spill one drop.