noontime of unmoving stone. Afternoon of blue dust,
evening of limbs in weary dissolve.
In response to Via Negativa: Deep Time.
Monsoon
Mist turns to rain, then windows
curtain with fog.
Months of watching doorways
grow ruffs of green, fronds
dimpling the wood. We unroll
parchment on the table, take out
our inks and instruments. One of us
climbs to the roof with a spyglass,
calls out the shapes of islands
emerging from the dark.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Common Lot
Shoes for the shoeless, clothes for the naked; sand for the floor, cloud for tarp. Sheathed in black latex, elbow to elbow, thigh to thigh. No room to swerve, no more emergency lanes. Turn off your blinkers, take down the signs. Say little, or say much: all of it will be appropriate. (Just not the politician’s face on stickers, adorning grocery bags.) Neat rows, stacked, like in a capsule hotel. But there are no room numbers, no keys; no luggage to stash behind the welcome counter, no one to answer to the dinner bell.
In response to Via Negativa: Geomancy.
Stage Directions
Thirst and dreams in the middle of the night. Smoked herring in oil; sardines, anchovies. Capers and capelin roe. This strange, intense longing for salt, unkillable like a roach that skitters out from under the shelves as soon as the lights are doused. Nervous twitching behind walls, beneath the floorboards. Don’t give me a fake geode to lick; let me have a bead of citrine, a yellow sapphire, a tiger’s-eye, a crystal facet around which to fit my tongue. In other words, the thing itself: because everything else would be poor copy. I groom my retinue of desires to impeccable standards— only the best will do. I march them through daily drills, hup hup; review their syntax, applaud all vaults and clumsy dismounts, attempts to clear the pommel horse. Up high, the bars and wires glint sharper than walls in a knife thrower’s gallery. But darlings, don’t fret. You work hard, you’re lovely as newborn lyrics. Don’t worry yourselves about the weather, ticket sales, secret shoppers, masquerading critics, the ennui of the damned. Don’t pay attention to anything but the beautiful wings waving you onward, the ones that flush the currant bushes with color and sound.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Fibrous
Cable
me a slow
pullover,
a screen,
a reedy mat
over which
I’ll moon-
walk bent,
your scent
the riddle
in every
rune.
In response to Via Negativa: The Way I Feel.
Disintegrate
(a partly found poem)
“The death toll could still climb higher, with an additional 1,000 cadaver bags sent to provinces, the disaster council announced as search-and-rescue operations continued in Tacloban City.” ~ from a news report on the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines
Different cells die at different rates.
Hair and nails continue to grow a little
while, but nature is more efficient.
In the air decomposition is twice as fast
as when the body is under water, four times
more than underground. Clostridia
and coliforms, enzymes; greens and blues
that blister. Methane and mercaptans,
sulfides. More rapid in the tropics,
where the sun brings everything up
to a melon boil. Bluebottle flies,
carrion flies, ants and beetles
and maggots and wasps. Nails and teeth
detach, their ivory falling, letter
after letter that will never
again be sent. After weeks, a month,
a year, a decade: rags and bones,
motes indistinguishable
from dust. Finally
everything the body held,
burst open like a secret.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Letter to Audrey Hepburn
So many yards of cloth:
good cotton, polyester, rayon;
prim edge of childhood’s
Peter Pan collars, chaste tents
of A-line skirts that crept
up and up as silhouettes tightened
and searched for the key
in any keyhole neckline,
the getaway boat in any bateau.
I was no exception: I could not
bind a blanket stitch,
would not feather a herringbone.
What chance did I have without
the curved swan of your neck,
my feet shod but shoddy
in ballerinas, un-dainty from birth,
limbs decorated with scars or scabs,
stitched together with dark
needle and thread? And so I flew
the nest right after breakfast,
kissed the first tear-shaped bar
of light from the chandelier,
hurried to find myself
a fit bustle. I do, I do,
I do regret more than a few
things: but guess what, finally
I’m old enough to admit I don’t
rue it all! —though you hit it
right on the head when you said
those things about the sky
being vague and empty— Marriage
(whatever that means), or what you give
yourself to, can be like that: just a country
where the thunder goes and things disappear
sometimes, but not forever.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Sectional
And how many heard the voice
in the whirlwind, the flicker
of last summer’s fireflies
just before a hand plunged
into the icy depths and came up,
garlanded with these bones?
In response to Via Negativa: Lush Life.
On trying to reach the poet who had no phone or e-mail
When I tried to reach
the poet-farmer, I was told
that I must write a letter
in the old-fashioned way
for he had no phone, no email,
no computer, and only relied
on the post office which he
walked to and from every day
since it was just a mile or so
up the road from where he lived
in a tiny rural town tucked into
the eastern part of south central
but modern-day America—
And being from a small town myself,
a hill station in the northern outposts
of the Philippine cordillera, I felt
an immediate affinity for that kind
of natural isolation; so immediately
I took a pen and wrote what I had to say
—my letter of invitation, the inked
words drawn in neat lines
on a clear rectangle of paper,
today’s date, then the salutation
and the complimentary close
and then my name, my signature,
before I folded the paper once
and then once over, slid it
into an envelope, sealed it
then sent it off, hoping the gesture
would end in meaningful connection,
the way it might feel
to bear a little water cupped
in one’s hands to the sea.
In response to Via Negativa: Offering.
Ghazal for the Dead: In Tacloban
Processed but not identified: scattered by wind,
splintered, battered where the flood left them in Tacloban.
The dark is a cave is the mouth of God or the unfathomable—
O for sleep without such helpless waking in Tacloban.
How many baubles and stolen billions will bring lives back? Ask
the former First Lady, who attended Holy Infant Academy in Tacloban.
The mayor was lashed to a coconut tree. The mayor was the coconut in the tree.
The tree was in a ballroom. This is not about the oral tradition in Tacloban.
In the midst of calamity, would you have time to worry about your shoes?
Through the waters, a typhoon victim bore a general on his back in Tacloban.
Why were the military first on the scene? Why did it take so long for relief
to arrive? The dead are past blame, the dead are past games in Tacloban.
The actors and actresses turned politicians flash smiles at the camera
while the living vomit with grief, hunger, dysentery, in Tacloban.