In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Hidden
Names misspelled, assumptions
triggered before the facts.
Folded cot or makeshift bed,
lunchpail oozing with suggestive
smells. Unreadable map of origins
beneath veiled eyes, slight bow
to obviate the need to offer up
the callused palm. Stations lined
with wayfarers: quiet under a row
of clocks ticking out world time,
clothing the same shade as boxes
at their feet, secured with twine.
[poem removed by author]
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Emblem
In the night
something listless flies
from the shoulder of the goddess:
pilgrim heart, it wants to find
the hollow from which it first was
taken: wants to know what ticks
beneath the marbled shoulder
of the goddess, listless
even in composure,
in the night.
In response to Via Negativa: Owl.
A Fiction
The Doctor insists
there is no longer
any promised land—
insists it is a myth,
inflated fable chased
across the dust
of centuries
by the dispossessed,
who have forgotten
where they’re from
and what they’re doing
here. And whose fault
is that? asks
the automaton with
the marble eye,
and the soldiers for hire
dropped into the deserts
of middle earth,
and the maids whose hands
have become detachable
at the wrists—
interchangeable as all
the other trafficked
body parts that move
the indifferent machine
farther and farther
from any living source.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Cogito, ergo
If the brown dog lies
panting in the sun,
do you think that means
it’s hot? If the skies
are overcast, do you think
we’ll see the once-in-a-lifetime
alignment of the stars? If
there are villages three
days’ hike away but reachable only
through trails that hug the cliffs,
should we go to the trouble
of a costly expedition? Isn’t it all
the same to make up names
and numbers, invent a history
for those poor people huddled there,
one they couldn’t after all read?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
No
“In the thin, soured soil,
a perfect endurance…” ~ Anna Ross
And what if I refuse to answer
to the order to stop and be searched,
to come like a dog with its tongue
hanging out when summoned
with two fingers of one hand?
And what if I refuse to open
my doors without warrant,
to get over it, to see
it was only a joke, just
a test, one more invisible
hoop to jump or be jumped?
And what if I’m not interested
in leftovers, the grudgingly
offered scraps, the free
meal that isn’t free? What if
I’ve kept an accounting
that doesn’t match your
claims, ledger books that show
where and when I didn’t get
what was due? But you
always change the rules,
the secret passwords,
the handshakes at the door
to the old boys’ club.
You circle your wagons
and act like you don’t
know what the fuck
I’m talking about.
History: A Lesson
Parade of vessels from across the seas, carrying
death and marketing schemes for the soul.
Lumber and hemp; tobacco, salt and spice: the measure
of a man’s or woman’s years of indentured service.
Land to till, forests to slash and burn.
The harvest that always goes to some other.
In the schoolhouse the foreign teacher turns
on her heel, confronts the monkey’s child.
The committee decides: You must not
have written this essay yourself, boy.
Rust that blooms across each hinge face
so the door never lies straight again.
Something that bends the grass
to flush out the hidden creatures.
Slick of oil all the way to the wharf.
Scritch of a match across granite.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Dark
”The duende is not in the throat;
the duende climbs up inside you,
from the soles of the feet.” ~ Lorca
What a fever of documentation
our naked glistening inspires
in your ships’ logs, what a frenzy
of pointing fingers when you all
come ashore. Don’t deny
you want to graze the tips
of our women’s breasts
as they husk the grain
and carry our young on their hips.
Slim pretense of idols you set
against the gods, their dark
bodies like ours
standing sentinel in the fields.
When we dance our bodies
enter the fire.
Your falsehoods robed in piety
make us subaltern:
our heels mark time, coppered
by the dust of the earth.
Alloyed in the gleam
of history and its chains,
rows of us mourn in orchards
sowing and reaping for tables
where we won’t be made
welcome, where the lyric blood
in our veins cannot mark
the pure white cotton
of your daughters’ frocks;
where our tired brown bodies
roam at night, looking to escape
the judgments of the merciless.
Claro? Claro.
Yes, I understand: you are no if or but, as I
am to you always mere afterthought or annexation
You are the one to issue then revoke a mandate
and I, the lackey sent to do your bidding
You are high office, powdered wig, gavel, armchair
traveler, bossing; and I, always the colony
You were the battering ram and I the hand-
carved gates of the walled city fallen to ruin
You are the shard of steel blue
hidden in my lolo‘s milky eye
You are the slippery riverbank against which you
pushed my lola and ripped open her baro’t saya
You are the padre, the señor, and I
your bastardo hijo, your hidden puta
You are the revolution I had to wage, and I
the spear I drove into the seafarer’s groin
You are the blood that stained the water,
and I the wrist that did not seal you brother
after the terms of your one-sided contract were drawn
~ after Octavio Paz, “Motion” (“Movimiento”)
In response to Via Negativa: The enemy of the good.