Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Six Poems in Likhaan 12 (!!!)

What a dream! I have six poems in the 12th issue of "Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature" by the UP Institute of Creative Writing. As far as literary journals in this country go, this is the mothership. Four of these poems--"An Ecological Disaster," "Men in the Woods," "Gallbladder" and "To Build a House"--were workshopped during the UST Workshop early this year (many thanks to Ned Parfan and his critical eye!), while "Cul-de-sac" was part of the suite that got rejected from the 2018 Ateneo Writers Workshop. Honestly the layout of this issue is giving me major ADHD vibes, so in lieu of screenshots here are the full texts.


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An Ecological Disaster


When my father starts his prayers,
it is an ecological disaster:
a boulder tumbling on the face
of a naked mountain, baked
to a perfect brown by the sun.
His words, needle-thin and ripe
with intention, plummet like acid rain
at the end of a drought.
Boys must be boys, he says,
to no particular name.
In my head, the rain gains strength,
scalding the sandy surface
of sinful dreams. It isn’t normal,
is what he means, like snow
that falls on the desert floor
and stays. When I leave
the house, it is a nightmare
for my father, who must think
I tumble from one bar to the next,
from one lover to another,
and so he spends the night
staring out the window, while I
spend my money on keys
to rooms I’d never own.
What’s natural is pre-ordained:
This, my father does not know.
The fall of a drop on parched soil,
or a boy’s heart into another’s arms,
is a story as ancient as amen,
and the storm that crumbles
rocks into grains of dirt
is as true and pure as his oldest
wish.

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Men in the Woods


I remember Julio: scar beneath a mournful
eye, and scowl on a face of china white.
A lighter peeking from his pocket the night
we met. Soaked shirts and sharp breaths
in a glade of leaves and fallen fruit.
Dante, too, and the dandelion fluff
on his crown of silver hair. His panting,
I can’t forget, gray-maned animal 
in leather pants, and shower of spit
with each thrust. Most of all, Gael,
flat on a stretcher, half-conscious, his leg
spurting blood, his head all blues
and crusting red. Took a shortcut that led
to brittle earth, then a ten-foot drop
on logs and rocks. His scream I heard,
but who called the ambulance, I don’t recall.

At break of dawn, they let us go, but not
before a round of questions, fired
at breakneck speed. Took our names,
but not what games we’d played, then sirens
breaking the silence. Nobody offered us
a ride, but we didn’t mind. Better to walk
and shake off the night, embrace the cold
spring morning all the way to the nearest
bus stop. Sunshine, soft as angels, fell
on our faces, casting our devils aside.
Nobody spoke; we only listened
to one another’s breathing, counting
our blessings. Jangle of coins in our pants,
hastily buttoned, caked with mud.

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To Build a House


we first build a ship. My father points
to the slow unmasking of the night sky,
shedding its cape of stars over parabolas
of mountains. He tells me the story

I’ve heard many times, how the king
of Athens sent his army to the woods
to bring home all the trees, each log
skinned of bark, flattened and polished

to rectangular planks. The hour too early
for breakfast or tired stories, there’s no
telling what he knows, but I know he smells
the whiskey and weed on my jacket.

Yet he chooses to say nothing, as do I,
our mutual silence as cobwebbed
as the ship on Theseus’ port, welcoming
a new plank to its soggy skeleton

until nothing remained of its old frame,
letting the builders strip it naked
rather than complain. I think of words
that hurt, like seawater feasting

on the hull of a tethered ship, and sip
my coffee instead. What does one say
to weathered kings, to fathers whose lives
are built on pretense? He points to a stain

on the linoleum, and I nod, shifting
my gaze downwards, guided by the ring
on his crooked finger: the rusting toaster,
the threadbare curtains, the staircase

in need of replacing, every surface
of this house torn apart in his mind
with the speed of one getting rid
of a sinking ship, our most sacred parts

so willfully effaced. Might as well
begin with How have you been?
Tell me everything. Tell me of your days
in prison, and I’ll tell you today

it’s been three years since I buried
my mother. And maybe we can skip
the more somber parts, the years
marked by your cold absence.

We begin with small things, words
light as feathers, maybe a smile,
maybe pardon for remembered sins.
Until gradually our vessel takes form,

its stern gilded with the faces of future
kings, its mast soaring to the ether.
Until finally, we set sail, wordless,
toward a home we no longer know.

*     *     *     *     *

Gallbladder


First, fix on the valley beneath
the ribs. Know the weakest spot,
where flesh will most likely give.
The skin is thin and breaks once
pricked by nail or blade or pick.

Pick his frame, framed between
metal bars. Memorize his outline
in the dark. Often, the lights
are dimmed, if not out. Often
the others are down, if not high.

Aim the shiv, whittled from the edge
of a toothbrush, like a dart practiced
and hurled. Anticipate the hushed
thud of the stab—muscle pierced
as fish speared in a shrinking pond.

Your part is done, now play
the clueless one. Turn in bed,
facing the wall, and heed the lure
of sleep, as war spreads from
cell to cell, con versus con.  

Watch as circles multiply on bodies
in the showers. Listen at night
to screams muffled by a shirt or a palm
pressed against the lips, then see
next morning who walks with a limp.

See to it they do not stop until
they’ve come for him: the whole
of him, the bits of him, his heart
and lungs and liver, his gallbladder
and the intestines coiled in his gut.

Make more shivs. Nick your neighbor’s
razor. Bribe the lout above your bunk
to do the nicking for you. Fifteen years
means a wife all wrinkled, and a son
all grown and smart, who’ll look you

in the eyes with no hint of recognition,
and he bought that for you—a decade
and a half wasted in this ten-by-ten
with three other men. So return to him
what is owed: Keep him high, adrift

in some make-believe cloud, thinking
you’ll still run for him when both of you
get out. Wait until the dead of night,
when he’s dead asleep and can’t run
from you. Then take your aim.

*     *     *     *     *

Pink and White


Four in the morning, a man begins
a hymn on a harp. Blanket of snow

on the pavement, basket of blooms,
pink and white, in the absence of light

shapeless, like a newborn melody
from way back when the hour

was slow, the ether pink and white,
the air thick with his wife’s perfume.

Notes pricking on his open wounds,
bleeding a minute trail of words.

Children, for one, though they had
none. Now a note folding

into a syllable landing square
on his tongue. Must be the taste

of warmth, bubbles in an evening
bath, a rubber duck between

slippery legs, fists of inch-long fingers.
Must be nice, this sight in a tub,

tiny bodies to rub afterwards.
If only she had more patience,

waited for this song now breaking
loose from the back of his throat,

now more croak than croon.
Old tune, older than the sky

on his forehead, the lines inscribed
beneath his eyes, the quiver in his bones.

After Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

*     *     *     *     *

Cul-de-sac


There’s logic to this place: how these slender streets
bleed into one another, concrete weaving into concrete,
the way nerves entwine within layers of tissue,
the way familiar structures disappear in plain sight.

Turn right doesn’t mean that time we stood under
the lamppost’s amber glow, wishing the rain would end
that row over something small. The chip on the china,
perhaps, the sunflower wilting on the terrace.

Turn right means ten shots of whiskey without ice,
humming something slow and dark and glum,
like smoke trails at day’s end, like an old house
stricken with insomnia, wooden doors creaking

even with the gentlest wind. So when I told you
I was never leaving, I was hoping you would get
the smallness of my aim, not to confuse desire
with devotion, the way night lights obscure details

of a face, a dress, the faded colors on street signs.
Hoping you’d turn around, turn into the city
I’d learned to love like our own child, this city
of barren women, scarred, a free-for-all nursery.

On the way home, we passed the house with the red gate,
the carved Virgin weeping upfront. While I whispered
another prayer, plucked at random from my childhood,
you said we were past reason. Then you turned left,

which made me think you had left for good.
But you only wanted to see our old house
one last time, at the cul-de-sac where nothing good
ever happened. Where days were hard to recall,

they blended into one another, the way buildings start
to look the same after so many years, the way, waking
in the middle of the night, I can no longer tell our faces
apart, or if you've already vanished, perhaps for good.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

These poems do paint, and the images served go crisp, crunchy and clean. Poets, editors and literary critics should smile over these lines.

But what about the rest of us who aren’t poets, editors or MFA’ed critics? Couldn’t contemporary poetry go strong not only on technique but also on appeal? Shouldn’t poetry also possess a popular embrace, even as it stands and reads from its personal niche?

Where have the likes of “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”, Ozymandias, Nature’s First Green Is Gold, or “When I die I want your hands on my eyes” gone?