Via Negativa

In the country where now it is the darkest form
of dark, every night has turned nightmare. There,

where demons think they have permission to freely
take what they want from among us, every encounter

is no longer rehearsal but battle. In the lands
where our foremothers sang through their teeth

through the air on wings of power, the cowardly
stumble to erect barricade after barricade.

They have outlawed Uber, though you might still
be able to get a Grab. Merciless traffic, lines

for public transportation so long their measure
could take you out of this world. I wish they would

actually take you out of this world, where not even
the most cautious child can find a sliver of clear

moonlight to guarantee home. But let us sing anyway:
for somewhere, someone winding and rewinding

the closed circuit TV tape has come to the part
where voices have doused the lamps in the alley; where

it is shown how they turned the alley into a sink,
fetid blood and liquids pooling slowly toward a clotted

drain. O for the beating of wings to shrive what they try
to hide in the dank pits of darkness. Collective hubbub

beyond the tracks and open air markets, where butchers
periodically wet their glistening wares with water— animal

jowls; flanks and sweetbreads pulsing under bare light bulbs.
The animal would first have been stunned with some kind

of blow: rendered unconscious, but not yet immediately
dead. The throat might be slashed, or a stake driven

close to the heart, the liver, the spleen. A captive bolt
pistol or conventional firearm might be fired into

the animal’s brain. On the tape, you might hear the boy
as he pleads: not necessarily for his life, just for time.

Someone heard his concern about having yet enough night after this
moment in which to memorize his lessons for a test. What is

the shortest distance between two points if not a line? His killers
were heard goading him to hold a gun; fire it, then run. This is how

animals are trussed tight for the final serve into the fire. It’s how
you know this is something they could not possibly have done to themselves.

~ in memoriam, Kian Loyd Delos Santos and all youth EJK victims; and the 13,000+

To pray, I no longer rely
on the language of the memorized,

on the round of mysteries made
by pressing thumb and index finger

around a carved wooden bead,
then dropping to the next. Now

and at the hour, to pray is
the whole shattered vessel

of the body’s need; and the spirit
propelling it forward on its knees.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Scientist.

Our science teachers told us to find and bring
old rolls of undeveloped film— then showed us

how to pull the strips out. They made a somehow
satisfyingly crisp sound as they cleared

the revolving sprockets. Each of us snipped
two squares from the reel, which we separated

with scissors and taped to cardboard windows
we then could hold before our eyes to shield them.

We’d go into the playground to witness how
the moon slid into position directly between

the earth and the sun. We were warned: the sky
would go dark even in broad daylight. The dogs

would howl, the roosters in their cages crow
in confusion. We were not to look directly

at the sun, or its concentrated rays could damage
our eyes. Another teacher said, if we filled a pail

or basin with water and set it on the ground,
we could look into it as into a mirror to see

this heavenly passage that would not come again
for maybe fifty years, or a hundred. We learned

the names for those cone-shaped shadows and the one
that superimposes its dark body upon an aura edged

with light: how it’s darkest at the center
where the source of light is completely occluded,

how the area released in passage shades off into
an almost or nearly dark. How in the old days,

the people beat their drums and gongs in a frenzy,
believing the god of light had been eaten by a beast.

and monuments, especially those erected

by leaders with a somehow smaller than normal
sense of self worth, that they must compensate

for what they couldn’t sustain in their tenure
—the love of the people, undoctored praise

in history books, acknowledgment without
coercion of the great, magnanimous vision

that allegedly brought their nations forward,
out of the pitiful darkness of the past

before they came along? Before its destruction
two winters ago, Mao’s gold-brushed statue,

36 meters high, sat on the desolate bit of farm
country hardest hit by the great famines of the ’50s

and ’60s. And what of the thousands of stone
or marble likenesses of Stalin and Lenin

that used to dominate parks and squares all
over the former Soviet empire, periodically

toppled by angry citizens and revolutionaries?
Like the one pulled down in Budapest in ’56:

after the fall of Communism, over two hundred
thousand workers dismantled Lenin’s bronze

statue, leaving only his boots, in which
they planted their flag. His stone head

rolled upon the boulevard, where it was marked
with insults. Along a windy stretch of highway

in Tuba, Benguet, a 98 foot bust of the late
Ferdinand Marcos was built. The Ibaloi who were

displaced from their homes and land smeared
the blood of sacrificial animals on the dictator’s

stony visage. Who knows if these are connected?
but in 1989, rebels blew open his sculpted face.

In 2002, treasure hunters chipped away at what
was left, and birds flew in and out of the hollows

that once were cheeks. This weekend on the news,
people pulled down the Confederate Soldier’s

Monument in Durham then surrounded it, some
spitting and cursing as if it were alive—

and in a way it’s true: so lifelike, carved stones
entomb almost mystically whatever part of our

human nature we’ve relegated. Cult objects,
they bristle in the glow of headlights;

they glimmer darkly in the sun, holding flags
that should have been rent to pieces years ago.

“…how many possess a cry
and never a body” ~ D. Bonta

You can usually tell what kind
of person you’re dealing with from the way,
for instance, they treat the people cleaning up for

or waiting on them. This observation, from my youngest
daughter who started working summers as a hostess
in a Japanese restaurant— though she wound up

being made to fill bento boxes with salad
greens and cherry tomatoes, and the pitchers
with ice cold water; roll the silverware

in napkins, and often, help wipe down tables
with a wet cloth at the end of the day. Oh yeah,
I know what she means; I’ve seen and heard it myself—

The demeanor and voice changing to one of peremptory
command, the not even looking into the eyes of those
whose hands bring you soup, refill your water

or tea; take the bowl back to the kitchen
just because the angry customer didn’t listen
or realize the item marked with four out of five

bird chillies on the menu means really spicy.
And the racist insult scrawled on the guest check
instead of a gratuity: “Ching Chong, if you can’t

speak English, maybe you should go back
to your country.” And whoever tells you
it’s about borders or soil or territory

doesn’t know or has willfully chosen to forget
our common and shameful histories. One apartment
we used to rent in the Ghent neighborhood

had some kind of electrical outlet
right in the middle of the dining room floor.
I couldn’t figure out what it was, until someone

explained it was likely from the old days,
when servants or slaves lived on the lower floor,
and could be summoned by the master or mistress

of the house to bring more iced tea, more mint
julep and deviled eggs, or take away the dirty dishes,
simply by pressing a buzzer with their foot. This week,

I read that a husband and wife in Quezon City
have just been convicted to 40 years in jail
for having repeatedly punched their maid, slammed

her body against doors; even pressing a hot iron
against her face, which caused her to go blind.
In Hong Kong, there are maids who press their bodies

into the space between the stove and the refrigerator
at night: these are their sleeping quarters. In Colorado,
a couple are now in jail for having starved and abused

their own blind, autistic son for over a decade. So much
anguish and pain, but we must recognize it by name—
Look it straight in the eye and not away, not pretend.

What animals are these, and how are they related to us?
What are those cries they emit out in the streets,
in the square, their fists raised in terrible salute?

 

In response to Via Negativa: Casualty.