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Posted on by Dave Bonta

Kenosis

Mid-January, & the bear
who hasn’t had
a meal in two
months, & won’t for
another three, half-
wakes to chew
sticks into soft
chips—bedding
for the cubs who
will soon be born
& squall
& nurse.
She may leave the den
to eat snow or merely
dream of it.
Her heart beats
eight times a minute.
But from the fastness
of her dark
unhungering body
milk will flow.


I’m indebted to a blog post from the North American Bear Center, “Lily Makes Bedding,” for the detail about chewing sticks — which sounds as if it was new discovery for the researchers. (The bear in the poem is on more of a Pennsylvania hibernating schedule, however.)

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Dis-Orient

(in response to Billy Collins’ “Orient“)

No, I will not dwell on landscapes
colored with pretty prayer flags and
dragon-decorated temples, or villages
eternally shrouded in mist, the kinds
so easily conjured in armchair travel
fantasies, because— hello, have you read
the news lately? There is a building boom
in China and the national bird is now
the construction crane. In Changsha,
they built a 30-story hotel in two weeks,
and have plans for several more. In October,
thousands of factory workers doing piece-
work on the shiny new iPhone 5 went on strike
in Zhengzhou and in Taiyuan. Around these
factories, they’ve built metal nets to catch
the bodies of would-be suicides: overworked,
undertrained, poorly paid (we know the concept
here as liability). I do not bow from the fulcrum
of my waist and my talents do not include
“cultural dancing” or being able to cut your toenails
while giving you a blow job. The sound of my voice
is not soft like a bell or like a little saxophone: it is
nothing diminutive, and my children will tell you
that years ago, when their father spent the household
money on a used car someone had conned him into buying
sight unseen, I threw pots and pans against the wall
and told him to go to hell. And yes, I have another side,
I have many sides, but they are all grounded in history,
bristling with context and all the languages in which
I dream. If you dug a hole in one of these worlds and fell
headlong into it, you would think you’d discovered
a new country; you would wonder how long it would take
before a band of beautiful, half-naked women would appear
to bear you away in a hammock and make you their king.

 

 

In response to Orient.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Looking for the Reader

This entry is part 28 of 29 in the series Conversari

a found poem

My love sends instant
messages while she works:
“I hope the reader
might surface from
a sea of paper.

I lost the cable too, but it
has just emerged—
along with a packet of tissues,
a lip salve & a hair comb—
from beneath an
ancient layer on
my desk.”

Five minutes later:
“No reader yet, but
two keys, three
xd memory cards,
one paperclip, two buttons,
three elastic
bands & a pair
of buttonhole scissors.
A small stapler, two
passport pictures of A.,
a nintendo stylus, a
medication prescription
form & a folding
plastic fork. Oh,
& a reel of pink
sewing cotton.
But no reader.

The tissues, I see,
came from Hotel Metro Heights,
8/35 WE A. Padam Singh Road,
Karol Bagh, New Delhi-5.

Here’s a receipt for milk
& biscuits for work
which I should have
claimed in March
last year & an un-
signed credit card.
Here’s my prefect’s
badge from school, a short
piece of six-core copper wiring,
the top from a bottle
of bath ales & an
apple pip—make
that two
apple pips. No reader.

Another credit card I didn’t
know I had! This one
is signed. I suppose
I should cut
them up.”


See Rachel’s account and a photo of some of the found objects at twisted rib.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The map-maker’s colors

Connaissances:

Compared to the colours of flags which are brash in their symbolism, the map-makers colours are indeed more delicate. They reflect the precarious and unstable nature of countries and borders as defined by the changing character of those states. In some ways these delicate colours contradict the bold and simple ones of flags, challenging those who stick their flags in a new region of the map, by that means trying to claim it.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Between the plea and the imperative,

the throat constricts, prepares for singing—
It isn’t easy, this business of remembering:
naming the victims, counting the limbs, counting,
always counting; doing the work of matching
letters, numbers, captions, to the fading
images on microfilm or photograph. Sorting
in the archive, sleep-deprived, the dreaming
mind faces horror after horror, re-living
nightmares of lynching, burning, flooding,
bombing, raping, shooting— Not even the sleeping
dead refuse this mandate: even they are rising,
pulling at sheets. Rending threads, unwinding,
they make us speak or sing: demanding, demanding—

 

In response to thus: new year's resolutions: sing.