Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
The serpent in the bowels of the underworld
shifts in the wind’s four directions:
Katungdan
Amihan
Sidlangan
Bagatnan
Let the trail of its breath
guide the tiller and the rudder,
the lathe and the loom.
Let our tin-can hearts make a din
of our sorrows, our meagre ransom
for the world’s seven moons.
In response to Via Negativa: Tintinnabulous.
When I was young,
I resembled nobody.
In the middle of the room,
the beautiful girls
practiced dance steps
like “The Grind,”
admiring each other’s hair
and clothes: I love
your elephant pants, that
disco shirt, that belt
with an apple on the buckle!
We gathered around a table
in someone’s smoke-
filled basement, listening
to guitar music, talking
about the future, always
the future, and how to get
away from here. Someone
passed around a bottle,
a rolled-up joint: Try it,
it’s just like smoking
paper. But I
was young and resembled
no one I knew.
At least not then,
not yet.
In response to Via Negativa: Hill country.
how it amplifies the details
of lost years: the murmur in study
halls, the light that glanced
off waxed wooden floors; the chalky
clouds that rose in frigid air
then sifted down the bannisters
from the felt percussion of
erasers. And the mingled smells
that slicked each humid head tired
from the day’s long schoolroom hours,
the dog-eared books whose spines
and sides we lightly sanded
at year’s end before passing them
on to others— The dictionaries
that held more than we would ever
know, the old Mercator maps we pulled
like shades to cover the dark
green surface of the board—
And we could point, reciting names
of continents and capitals and seas
that some of us now have crossed.
And some of us have stayed,
and some returned. But none of us
remember exactly when or how we turned,
and, turning, left it all behind.
In response to Via Negativa: Prescription.
Let it be swift, let it be easy
as quick cover of new snow.
Let it bear tokens of what
we loved the most in summer—
Let it be dappled as the light
that slicks the undersides of leaves.
Let it have hands that feel
no heavier than breath.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
I pushed off long ago,
barely looking back.
Part of it was caused
by circumstance,
other parts by willfulness
or what we mean
when we say
I had no choice.
What happened
in the intervening years
would fill an archive,
but no more or less
than anyone else’s
harlequin life.
I cannot clearly tell
what parts shone
with more lucidity
than foolishness,
or where I found
the courage to rise
above the givens of this
grasping self. So many
moments as if doomed
from the start
taught me how difficult
it is to shelter hope,
how necessary to hold
its stubborn flicker,
cupped against
the not yet known.
In response to Via Negativa: Writing process.
tread lightly in case the willow
has not yet finished mourning.
Leave the hedges untrimmed
for a few more weeks, in case
the colonies of winged things
have not yet finished migrating.
Let the stone basin keep its ring
of verdigris: such faithfulness
is worth emulating. And let the dull
wool of evening cover the naked stones:
its old heart is rich with longing.
In response to Via Negativa: Schooling.
for another poem to document
the clack of acorns falling
from the tree,
for another poet to sit
at a table cleared of all
but oil stains from some
previous feast?
What urgency requires
a document be made of things
that the mouth has tasted,
all the secrets slipped
into the body’s crevices?
Why whittle songs
out of the ordinariness
of days, their thinning larder
and their pickled stores?
Someone counts the stones
that lead up the temple steps.
Someone weighs the grains,
pours them into burlap sacks.
And someone draws the tiller
from one end of the row to another,
before turning around again.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
You call and I serve
because you gave me
a name that means hover,
watch over. I give up
and defer, make way,
beg pardon, squeeze
into the narrow
back passage in my
coming and going.
There’s a button
inlaid in the floor,
its purpose
my summons. And I
no longer recall
what it’s like
not to start
at the sound
of my name.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
For what occasion did I save
that ill-fitting suit, those shoes
that pinched, that jeweled clutch
worn only one other time before I
put all away and lined the bags
with mothballs? I still have the two
white underskirts adorned with tiny
satin rosebuds made for my First Communion;
and the jade green blouse and skirt I wore
when I got hitched a second time.
Among the baby shoes and embroidered
bedspreads, there is an envelope too
in which I’ve kept relics— hair and nail
clippings, birth-cords: four dried, indigo-
colored discs smaller than stamps,
threaded through their hearts by safety
pins to paper, the way that mothers like
to keep their daughters close.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
the tiny herald
in the gut.
Before the torrent,
the restless dream.
Before the conflagration,
the careless match.
Before return,
the anxious waiting
at the threshold of no
going back.
In response to Via Negativa: Proverbial.