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Posted on by Dave Bonta

How to find things (videopoem)

This entry is part 36 of 39 in the series Manual

 

Watch on Vimeo

Belgian filmmaker and composer Swoon (a.k.a. Marc Neys) has made another film in response to one of the pieces in my Manual series, using the audio I included with the original post. This one recycles footage (with permission) from a YouTube user, “Ephemeral Rift.” As Marc explains in a blog post,

He’s a very inspirational guy who makes videos to induce ASMR.
Check him out if you are into that or would like to learn about ‘the tinglesmiths.’

I like his videos ’cause he’s not only paying attention to the ASMR-sounds but has a great visual touch. I wondered if his images would stand out without the sounds they’re made for, and they do.

This is the fifth film in Swoon’s “Manual” collection, following an eight-month hiatus in production. There’s some continuity with the others, but also a new element of the grotesque that I particularly appreciated. Needless to say, I am pleased and deeply honored to have an artist of Swoon’s calibre building upon my texts in this manner.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

The Empress of Malcolm Square

This entry is part 21 of 41 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2012

 

Who was that woman who painted her cheeks with flowers, her hair in disarray?
She walked unabashed in the plaza, passed shopkeepers who hid behind their wares.
We never knew where she slept at night, how she spent the other hours of the day.

She’d disappear during the monsoon months like mist dissolving into grey;
then when the weather turned warmer, we’d hear her shrill cries pierce the air.
She smeared flowers on her cheeks or wound them through her hair in disarray.

She had a name I can’t recall; I only know it reeked of solitude. Fey,
unabashed, her tattered skirts swept plaza stones with eerie flair—
Who knew where she slept at night, how she spent the other hours of the day?

Who didn’t tremble a little at her approach? And yet her eyes— steely, grey,
sharper than the chiseled moon— it seemed could size you up, intuiting your despair.
They say she knew the future: her painted cheek, a screen for our own disarray.

I thought I knew who she once was: an artist’s model, an ingenue, stylish, blasé—
There was this talk: of course a lover, a jilting. (What we don’t know, we embroider.)
We never saw where she slept at night, how she fed the other hours of the day.

She’s her own fable, fantastic narrative: lucid in survival, she laced
hibiscus in her hair, placed unashamed bid for what was due: her share.
Gypsy with flowered cheeks, with tresses in ravaged disarray—
Love’s still our common dream, imperfect to this day.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Project

This entry is part 9 of 22 in the series Alternate Histories

 

Gray, ugly, already starting
to crumble. What the project’s
planners had meant it to say
was: The future is here.
What the residents heard:
You do not belong.
Fortunately, it was possible
to pry the windows open.
On any given night,
you could stand on the street
& watch the litter sail out:
Happy Meal bags, cigarette butts
leaving trails of sparks,
yesterday’s paper.
This year-round autumn
blanketed the courtyard,
& was only swept aside
when the police needed
to outline in chalk
another occupant who’d vanished
through the one good door.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Dear Naga Buddha,

This entry is part 19 of 41 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2012

 

how still, how still you sit
beneath the ticking of the seven-
headed tree; it’s hard to understand,
but just like ours, those tongues
have foraged along the ground
for leftovers, for milky drops
of immortality. O careless and
forgetful gods, you’ve crowned us
with accidents, spiked our appetites,
littered the way with detours
and false starts. No warnings issued
about sharp blades of grass that split
the ligaments in the mouth: and thus,
in dreams, the restless body turns
and hisses, even in brief repose.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Valediction

This entry is part 8 of 22 in the series Alternate Histories

 

We didn’t say goodbye
with our hands but
with naked branches.
(And anyway it was
more of a hello.)
You undid me the way
a fire plays a harp,
the strings singing as
they snap. (Each note
can only sound once:
an excellent discipline!)
They are still together,
your smoke & my fog.
(I feed them wood.)

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Where great teachers come from

mole:

The afternoon I found myself drawing a fine reproduction, in scarlet pencil, of a small splatter of ketchup: easier than facing the shrieks of desolation that would have met an attempt to wipe it up & leave no record of its beauty. Or the dread of walking out on a rainy morning, and knowing that six blocks would take half an hour, because every drowning worm on the way must be rescued. There might be twenty such, and each must be lifted tenderly: they are easily injured, especially when waterlogged. At two years of age, she suddenly comprehended that all the dinosaurs had died. She grieved for a year.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Unraveling

She thinks of a former teacher who, running into her at a conference, blurts out: I hear your writing is as exquisite as ever, but that your life isn’t. What does one say in the face of such a stupendous welcome? She could have said, Let me start from the beginning; or— no, the beginning before that beginning. Which thread would you like to follow? But then again, it doesn’t really matter, does it? The ball of red yarn might tangle in the bushes, catch on thorns; but always, it leads back to the beast that slumbers in the center. Sometimes there is one beast. Sometimes the one beast is many. It’s grown fat on the gristle of the past and its bedroll of stories: pity, fear, the hurt from a pebble in a shoe. It never spared a thing, lover or child, parent or sibling. In remembering, she remembers too how myth is perhaps the baddest habit, the hardest one to break. Who said she couldn’t lay that tightly wound mess at her feet and simply walk, finding the way back by instinct? Who said she had to pick up the thread, retrace the steps she took before? She wants to leave it, leave it where it is; the signs say it’s time to unhalter her story.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Helmsman.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Helmsman

This entry is part 24 of 29 in the series Conversari

 

“For years, I thought I hated children’s laughter.
I had no idea I was just hungry.”
—Healthy Choice ad

No children of my own, I thought
they all laughed that way—
teasing, cruel. Some poor scapegoat
forced to ingest god knows what.

Cleaning the dormitories, scrubbing
the blood from the shower walls,
my stomach contracts like a fist
around a blank coin.

Tomorrow, the soles of the state
inspector’s shoes will squeak
against spit-shiny floors.
He’ll hear nothing else. But today

I move backwards down the corridor
with the mop steering from side to side,
its wet locks dragging
an endless river of filth.


In response to twisted rib: “Secrecy imposed on the exposure of alleged child abuse”

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Oh November,

oh week after the rather disastrous
midterms that didn’t get cancelled
despite the hurricane school closings;
oh agonizing stretch before the next
holiday break, what will I do with you
and with the two who plagiarized
their essays despite submitting them
on SafeAssign? Tonight has been
particularly trying. Only the same
four or five students with any energy
to recite; meanwhile, the rest sit silent,
some sullen, indifferent, slunk low
in their chairs at the end of a long day.
And I’m their last stop, last three-hour,
once-a-week literature requirement put off
for too long, and now it is the final
semester before graduation…
Narrative arc, verisimilitude, conflict
and epiphany are the farthest things
from their minds; but I press on
into the winding corridors of story,
feeling like a guide who’s lost
her troupe somewhere near the cafe
or water fountain or the gift shop
(for sure the gift shop): that too
has been foreshadowed. Once in a rare
while, it almost seems that a word
I’ve uttered has somehow pierced
the veil; as if a small domestic
animal has burrowed close then
suddenly nipped the tender flesh—
and then it is as if a brace of wind
has flung open a window and we
can see the coming snow, sped
by wind, above the trees.

 

In response to small stone (176).