Amateur Juvenalia

COUNTING

The clock mocks me. It isn't time
I count by. Days are a million twenty-four-hour
breaths each, pounding away like stone hammers
on the tin roof, refusing air as soon
as it enters. I inhale, and already
it's been hours of raw heat that won't pass
rising from throat to mouth
to the memory of your eyes. Breathing out,
weeks come careening around the corner,
blindsiding need for your blinding hands
on my breasts, my thighs. They ache to touch.
But I've been a cripple the moment
Sunday backed out of the driveway,
took you with it until I couldn't see
the wide plain of your back. I glance
up the window through to the wall;
it is only tomorrow. But the body,
Incontinent Fool, still knows better. My heart's
shut down while mind and lung work
piston-duty to keep me alive
until Mercy comes handing you back to me.

MOTHER MEETS HER CHILD

Father’s hand is on Mother’s belly,
its caramel stickiness seeping
into the silk of her Shanghai dress.
“I think the little one would enjoy
his first time here,” Father says,
pointing pink cotton candy stick
to the wild bloom of tents
before them. Mother
purses her lips into a small
smile, quietly watching
the red-yellow-blue tide
flow around them.
Her eyes follow a thickening
gush of hats and pigtails
toward a large tent. The sign
above says “Wonders of Nature.”
Father takes her elbow,
and they move with the others
through the dark slash
dividing wonders from the mundane:
Siamese twins joined
at the head, four-armed
knife-jugglers, spiderwomen.
But Mother only looks
at a boy on a cot, torso raised
on pillows to align with his
enormous head. The Elephant Boy
rolls slowly to his side,
his mouth a tiny o
at the effort. Around the
glass case, children point
him out to their parents
who whisper about him
to other parents. Mother meets
his eyes. She doesn’t move
when Father puts his arm
around her shoulder.
Father touches her belly once again.
For the first time, the Child inside her stirs,
rises to the warmth of Father’s hand,
strains to see the wonder
that Mother’s heartbeat sings.

HEARING

Faint voices from
thelate-night movie
next-door
picked up by the distant
engine of the occasional
car speeding along
the main street.
We live very close
to the edge
of the village,
the station
no more that half
of half-a-mile
from our house.
I would listen
to rattled traincars passing.
Then, there is nothing again.

In the dark,
the sound of breathing
is better heard.
I press my ear
closer into the pillow
ans see snatches
of words thriving
from my waking dreams.
But I do not recognize
them, still insist
they were yours,
no matter how you
patiently help me
to remember;
I only laugh
in time with the hollow
thud of the pillow
I turn over and over
on my lap.

I stop to see
dust rising to meet
my eyes. The sting
reminds me of old
cricket-voices.
They prick the backs
of my ears like a thousand,
tiny needles.

BIRTHDAY

It's strange now that I have
just become old enough to forget
that I find myself wondering
about you, the boy ten years ago,
and the spider you broushed from my hair.
I suspect you had put it there
for good measure after I
broke your pencil when
you called me a liar
because I said I could see
angels. Something felt funny
somewhere in my head, and then
there was the remorse
in your arm brushing
my leaft eyelid gently---
I've been shaking my hair back
ever since, making sure you
and other boys like you didn't
pull a fast one. My fingers
part across and gather
as much strands to comb
back clean through the plain
black tips that cut bluntly
into my nape. But tonight I
remember: you were reaching
over to catch the spider
tangled in my hair;
my head had stopped frozen
as you raised your open palm
to show me the half-grown
creature clinging to it.
The saved thing I look for
just above me, moving down
where I can see it.

for Warren

MORNING RITUAL

This morning I fit my sneakers
again before wearing proper
shoes. Rugged and tractionless,
they are two things the world
has forgotten about me;
being the oldest
survivors of my reclusive
adolescence give then the privilege.
My fingers still tangle with the laces
as if I'd just learned how
to tie. I still struggle. I still bite
my tongue. I still tie
the knot twice. And then
I kick them off,
and the double thud
on the floor wakes
me fully, suddenly,
as if this were the first time
for my feet to touch ground;
for light to embrace
everything that can be seen;
for whatever it was
that came through for me
and held fast until this moment:
eye-to-eye with myself
through an open door,
barefoot, unafraid,
but in terrible awe of the next step
to what I may
or may not become.

STARVING

We get off the bus short of our stop,
the road ahead barricaded.
Noise starts for the twelve-hour shift
at Metro Train Tunnel E. I stroll behind
a slow couple wearing
matching rainbow-striped shirts,
standing close to each other
like color bars. The man
teases, the woman breaks away,
laughing. She shouts. Your name
jumps out at me like cold water.
The man pulls her close, nuzzles her neck.
He is nothing like you.

Your face, which has started to blur:
shaky Polaroid smile, distant gaze,
that self-possessed Jean Reno slouch
as you turned away from me
that last time. I turn the memory
under my tongue, flip it right side up,
roll it to taste. I bite the corners
again, sharp edges slowly wearing down.

I am careful not to open
my mouth; your name
might burst from me
like someone who had too much
to drink. I'm starving, you see,
and I've swallowed you whole,
still burning in my belly.

The couple ahead starts to move faster,
leaving me heavily behind.
The woman, suspicion in her eyes,
looks back at me. She knows.
She can smell blood
in my mouth from miles away.

SOUVENIR

There was no prelude,
no meeting of eyes. I was staring
into the stark Budweiser
on the dashboard when I felt it:
the full force of his blue eyes
so suddenly level with my gaze,
warm breath roughly
pushing against my mouth.
It was over in a second.

When I got home, I found
a shirt hung over a chair
beside the bed he slept in.
The smell of him
in that old Indian plaid,
the only tailored one he had,
the one he had worn the last
night he'd been here---
the only thing he left behind.
And me, of course,
with all of the 100% coarse
cotton material creased
into my stinging face.

It was his breath
on me again, his hand
squeezing my arm.
It was the way he turned
his head; the slight shift of air
under me. For a moment,
I was an old woman, putting
every detail of that moment
into place, looking back
to see how long
I could keep you there.

PREPOSITIONS

A quarter-of-an-inch turn
to the left while standing in line
by the glaring grocery counter,
another minute smoking
on the benches by the parking
lot, a few more strides
in the crowded corridor after rain;
you could have seen me,
given that compulsory nod,
that flag-raise of the hand
at half-mast. Maybe I'd have smiled
and walked off, maybe for good.
But I turn the corner,
look at an interesting book
(Werner, "Sociology of Small Groups," 1995)
on the nearest shelf or walk off
to an imaginary errand;
a blur of white almost crossing
you path, faceless like passing trees
outside a car window early morning
on the South Expressway---
you can't hit what you can't see.
I'm moving as fast as I can.
As far away. As long as I can.
I have every intention of losing you.

MOVING

There was no way to keep you still
when that leg hurt. It was probably the cold nights,
local beer still ringing in your head, or maybe
that long walk we had through town,
stone-sober, money tucked safely
in our socks (the crowd and cheap music
were all amusing to you, as long as we
were walking away from them).

Maybe, it was boredom. The unmovable patience
of the place woke you earliest in the morning:
the wind moved among the trees
instead of through them; no rustling proper
to a garden in summer. You'd have less
to complain about, following the clouds
like passing picture books: an old man, a horse,
a Buick---you believed in change.

It was only my silence that you couldn't rescue.
And I would wait everyday for that click on the gate,
for that long last look, that never-again note
on the table. But this summer has set
you off again, kicking dry leaves around
like a madman, trying to make me
cry out like a proper madwoman.

MINUTE DINNERS

Suddenly silent together
in the middle of dinner, I resort
to picking out raisins
from the Carribean rice
that took a full-minute travel
from bix to the table.
The best-buy-supermarket kind
too hot, too fast,
it gave me time to hear
you everytime you shifted in your seat.
And I'm surprised with a thought:
you love raisins, but I didn't
think of you when I pulled
the box from the instant gourmet
shelf, in fact, didn't know I had it;
just reached into the cupboard
today and felt right angles
between the ketchup bottle
and hermetically-sealed spool of floss.
I have no aversion to raisins
in particular, but I don't
want anything to do
with preserved fruit sucked dry
of its pulp. Things like these
come up during minute
dinners that mostly find
me already full, sitting across you
nothing else to mind
but the fork, the clatter
and the stillness after that;
but myself, trying to remember
why I shouldn't leave
the table before you were through.
It's not etiquette I'm talking about.
It's you, crouched over your food
the way you're doing now,
never needing to look up to see if I've left.
It's me as I push raisins to the edge
of the plate, grating forkfuls at a time.
You might want them later.

WHAT'S HARD TO DO

Something's wrong, he says,
and touches me on the shoulder.
When I was younger he'd
hold me tight until I felt
safe enough to cry.
Right now, facing him,
I am taller, years closer,
world-wiser. It's hard for me
not having to tilt
my head way back anymore
to meet his eyes;
his old silence, the mute
Fender guitar in the garage.
In a moment, when I turn to him,
his hand will slip away so fast,
it might have been just the wind.

I think about taking it now
as simply as if I took it everyday.
To let him know, I know---
it's hard not to be young enough
to cry anymore, to stand
straight enough not to be held.
Hard not to be like my father,
who finds it hard not to forgive.

MARKETPLACES

I.

Nobody here
looks someone
in the eye,
except to haggle
with vendors
over a pork cutlet
two lines less of a kilo.
Or the price
of an ungutted fish
already turning pale
at the gills.
Even then,
the eyes merely pass
across the face.
Resting occasionally
on a shiny forehead,
or a wet fly
stranded
in the unkempt mop
of the butcher's hair.

Their Sunday-morning faces
bare and heavy-lidded
under a week's worth
of obligations, meet
at a safe periphery,
so that no apologies
will be expected
for muddied slippers
or eggs broken
against the bosom
of some girl hurrying
behind her mother.

Here, in the crush
and grind of bodies
there is enough room
for accidents.

II.

At an open stall
by the entrance,
the regular customers
take a pinch
from the mound of rock salt
which an old woman,
half-blind with the strain
of sorting out dried sea
from the sand,
patiently piles
in her bilao:
running her palms up
against the sides,
and towards her.

None of them will buy
even a ganta of her
rough grains,
but they all know
what it tastes like;
the sound it makes
when gritted between
the teeth, crunched
unceremoniously
by the molars;
the slow, seething pain
when passed over
the sores on their tongues.

And there will be no pangs
of guilt, or accusations
from those who see
everything from the corner
of their eyes. There is only
the rustling sound
of fabric in old pockets
where they wipe
their fingers clean
of tell-tale
salt-dust.

AFTER MILAN KUNDERA'S
Unbearable Lightness of Being

The woman-child
in the wicker basket
you caught drifting
towards the foot
of your bed,
she is yours.

You own what you call by name.
From the first clean words
roundly falling,
freely forming
in the half-dreams
of this consumptive night,
you have summoned her.

Now she knows you
in the blinding
clarity of senses
when a fever tides over
She recalls
your body stretching out
beside her, fingers
grazing breasts,
the waver
of your voice
in the learning
of her name.

Her coming
pulls you down
in the undertow
of weightless words.
You are caught
in her rising
and falling,
the drawing
and passing
of silent breath
from life to life.

Now you cannot turn
in your own bed
without breaking
in the flood
of her touch.

Other days,
you would have
sent her away.
But in the half-light,
you surrender
to the shape
and salt
of her body
flowing in time
with the unhurried
shifting of tides.

MILES FROM THE HARBOR

I sit on the prow
and grasp the tired
wooden oars
that hardly yield.
I dig them into the water:
twig-arms struggling
against the slow-cresting
muscles of the sea.

Miles from the harbor,
my boat stalls.
WInd touches me
from behind.
I watch in deepest night
those floating lights break
steadily across the shore
like a sudden
white wave caught
in palm-leaves---fireflies;
Winged patterns
weaved through the briny air.

Bent by watery refraction,
they might have been lost
lantern lights skimming
towards my boat
or the smallest scattering
of petals over
the sky-borrowed
moon.

In this ocean beyond
ocean of paper-weight creatures,
one unretrievable moment,
a passing cloud
the surreptitious
blink of a star
may let some careful
code silt unseen
in the turning breakwater.

But the waiting,
my hands on the stilled
oars, leaves a vision
of the heaving sky
at my feet.
And in my chest,
breath
thin as mothwings.

:: Amateur Juvenalia ::