~ after "The Slaughtered Ox," Rembrandt (1655)
Katay is the name for it Meaning flayed
Tufted open Inside out After the fire
singes the hair off flesh and the knife
makes its rapid zigzag through
the body's tent It is important
to know what plunged into that humid
pit The entire forearm scoured the depths
for every gift the animal could surrender
The lungs' heaving bellows Islands of spleen The liver
pooling in a green lagoon With what should we anoint
the pearled clots in the viscera A ladder
of bones revealed as the hand flies up
to the mouth More startled than clumps of leaf
pulling away from touch From
the anonymous bodies dumped there
night after night after night
Aria: Beginning
A winter wren warbles his song beside the spring-
house--- meaning things have decided to open again,
meaning those re-enactments of young and fragile.
The sun is fitful, coming through openings of cloud.
Or there are curtains of fog, heavy in the morning;
milk and salt you can almost taste in the air.
But when white petals cover the trees,
it can also mean grief welling up alongside
the new: sorrow of the unbearable, bringing
you to your knees each time. Melody that starts
and breaks, that calls and calls with the body until
it's bent from hurling itself into the open.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Tikbalang Haibun
I've said Please may I each time I've passed, strewn bits of bread and sugar
at the foot of the tree, careful not to touch the bristling bark. I've worn
my shirt inside out, tucking the gleam of buttons away from light. Shouldn't
the journey be over by now? Shouldn't it get easier? Shouldn't I have found
my way years ago? But here I am again, returned to the same familiar ground:
every stone slippered in moss, the fences peeling, the shed falling down.
My pockets are nearly empty of coin, my lashes stenciled in salt and dust.
Every roof has a chimney and all of them smoke; and yet you look for me
in each house.
Shafts of light comb
through leaves on the trees.
Their heads remain unruly.
Postcard to myself in a bad marriage
Walls were made for stopping fists
and paychecks were for squandering.
Shirts dried stiff on the line
after bleaching. You left, you
always left, slamming every door
on the way out. The bed slid across
the floor and the child sitting on it
clutched at the blankets. I couldn't
hear the voice in my head for all
the noise. I couldn't see the moon
following me on the road as I searched
for something I'd lost long before.
An owl called out in the dark. Or
perhaps it was me, asking.
In the hills, my heart breaks
Imagine a lake fringed with weeping
willows, a string of rowboats
floating on brown water.
A windless day,
pine trees not yet torn
from the hillsides.
Imagine the open
faces of sunflowers, not yet
in the manner of omens.
One salted cracker,
one boiled egg on the plate.
The mouth creaking open like a door.
In the tin-roofed houses, widows
lighting the stove, forgetting
the water when it boils.
Give thanks for the whorls
in wood shaped like watchful eyes,
the whistle that comes as if
out of nowhere--- meaning
it is time to eat or pray or bathe
or surrender again to silence.
Prescience
When I looked into the window's
yellow well from an upper floor
When on the phone I heard
her say I cannot talk anymore
When they opened his chest to coax
the heart muscles open
When the corridor wound itself
tighter than a tourniquet
When the winds came through the floor-
boards as delicate sharp whips
Time isn’t real:
a mural I saw at a museum exhibit,
the words scripted across a lake
of cloudy color against white.
Except we had only twenty minutes
before the doors would close
and the guards ushered us back out
into the rain. At the train
station, all the people turning
toward monitors, watching for arrivals
and departures: each face cupped
like a flower toward the dropping
light. When I was a child, I liked
to spin in the playground---
my eyes fixed on the highest
point of a rooftop,
arms spread out like wings;
the world a drum in a zoetrope.
*
[ Zoetrope: Gr., ζωή zoe, "life" and τρόπος tropos, "turning" ]
Haibun for the Disappeared
My brothers were silenced when they spoke against the ones who came
into our villages, searching for anyone they could blame for the dictator's
latest obsessions. Every cul-de-sac grew tufts of blood-stained grass, asterisks
of coiled wire, moats where we could see the last shape their bodies held,
seizing and exhaling stars. Night after feverish night I push needle and thread
through pieces of linen, cutting holes for sleeves and openings for the neck
and head. I dream about how each will wear these shirts at the next
threshing festival and dance in the square with a girl. But my fingers
tear out the seams, start over again, despairing of getting it right.
Everyone hides in their huts at sundown. Rifles march in the streets.
The moon rises and the sound
of wings fills the window--- my voice
a shroud I throw into the sky.
Manifest Destiny (Infinite Loop)
~ erasure poem based on The First Voyage Round the World;
Antonio Pigafetta, 1874
12.
one of them with a great sword gave him a great blow on the left
leg, which brought the captain down on his face
they deprived of life our mirror, light, comfort, true guide
He died;
Most versed in nautical charts, he knew
how to attempt the circuit of the
globe, which he almost completed
Manifest Destiny (Infinite Loop)
x
~ erasure poem based on The First Voyage Round the World;
Antonio Pigafetta, 1874
11.
another chief named
Silapulapu would not in any way obey the King of Spain
we then leaped into the water up to our thighs
and we
the islanders fifteen hundred in number they came down upon
us with terrible shouts
springing
throwing arrows, javelins, spears hardened in fire
our men set
fire to their houses
The rest came down
upon us with greater fury