Three movements, typhoons, and being thankful

I guess this month is sort of surprisingly productive for me.

My poem “Three Movements on Anatomy” is up in Stone Telling Magazine.

Many thanks to editors Rose Lemberg and Shweta Narayan for this opportunity and their feedback. Thanks as well to friends and mentors alike who took their time to help me with this piece. Do check the poem out and let me know what you think.

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Other news (if you still didn’t know): recently Typhoon Sendong hit Mindanao and as of this afternoon, death tolls have hit more than 1,000. You can help and donate goods and othersuch supplies to those in need.

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It’s so surreal that all of this is happening. I mean, halfway across the archipelago people have lost their homes and loved ones and just this afternoon I had a nice time hanging out with my friends. I don’t even know why I find this weird because this sort of thing happens all the time: people suffer while others are happy; sometimes we can tie it to an apparent cause, sometimes it just happens. But it’s not how things should be, you know? I feel idealistic for thinking this way.

I’ve spent a hefty amount of the past few months feeling sad and cranky about my life (depressive episodes, et al) but the past few days catching up with people and just laying back have eased a lot of myself back in. And I guess I just wish for more of that in the world, you know? Like, just more times with people we love and those we can sit down with for hours talking about Stuff, et al, not worrying about Everything Else That Makes Us Sad, Stressed, and/or Uptight.

Christmas is about to roll in and I am broke (I spent my mother’s Christmas money present buying people gifts and I didn’t even get to buy things for all the people I wanted to give presents to) and this is the season I got the least amount of presents (because almost all my friends are broke too haha) but somehow it feels like one of the best holidays so far. Just hanging out, meeting up with people I haven’t seen in 100 years. Pretty much that simple to be happy, surprisingly. Right now I’m thankful for a lot of the things and people I have, the things I’ve achieved up to this point. Life. I’m thankful life is being good, despite all the setbacks, and I wish it kept getting better.

Season’s Greetings to you all.

Miss

Due to my sudden shyness, we have this:

Song

You are the hand resting quietly
on my shoulder. You are the slight push
waking me from a dream
of waves and the absence
of sky. You are the words hiding
inside an old book. You are the smile
wedged within memory
and smoke, wafting
its weightless body
across a continent of things
lost. You are the time I spent making
my way from point A to B. You are surprise,
slowly making its exit, slinging
your backpack on your shoulders,
slouched and ready to rest. You are the door swinging
open. You are the taste of alcohol and a quiet night
I keep conjuring before sleep. You are the words I rearrange
into another poem about sadness. You are song
in place of a poem. You are fire
lit all alone in the wilderness. You are the sun,
condemned to consume its own brightness, bringing
with it everything that ever dared love
light. You are gravity, pulling
the weight of stars from your backpack, easing
out a mobile for the blind and wingless, bringing
tumbleweeds and angels alike into dancing.
You are the feet that will never touch
the ground. You are an old telephone gathering messages
of dust. You are giraffes and elephants, limbs leading
a slew of animals into new landscapes. You are the zygote dividing
with certainty in someone’s womb. You are the skeletons
of dinosaurs who died, turning
into a song no one sings. You are the question I threw
to the wind. You are a ship housing
the voices of mermaids, everything the sea refuses
to say. You are the rain, leaving
the softest of kisses on my cheeks as my body breaks
through a wave of people, making
my way home. You are the hand
resting quietly on my shoulder.

smoke signals

Upon returning to her room, she strips
her body bare of clothing, piles
the garments on the floor and barges
into the bathroom. Her body is warm
and ripe with the scent of his smoke, marked
with his fingerprints just a few hours ago. Turning
the faucet on, she grits her teeth
as the cold water washes all traces of him
down the noisy drain: the sound
of a body being forced to forget.

on wreckage, again

In which I must thank you,
for always reminding me of things I “have
to see”, as you said so yourself:
what colors dance on the opposite side
of the sky, bodies of light draped
underneath a blanket now made anew
as a map for bodies covered
in an atmosphere of breath, stirring
an ocean all to themselves
where fish sing lullabies
while sea-horses and skeletons give chase
in the mossy decks of shipwrecks,
tattered sails unfurled: a fleet
ready to receive, be flown
by the arms of an imaginary wind, telling
of movement. A promise,
despite wreckage.

Undine

She pursed her lips, flinging
her hair, clearing her face- gathering
a bramble of fishnets and sea weed
at her back. Pale, pointed fingers wiping
salt off scales, she turned, said: How much
do you know? Have you stayed in the water long
enough to hear what song it has to sing?

“BYOB: Bring your own boat”

Listen to the wind howling
with an urgency you chose
to forget. The water,

look at how it tries to climb
the walls of your limbs as you surge
against a growing flood.

Last night, a dream of the water:

of almost drowning, the taste
of salt stuck in my throat, dried
makings of a mermaid’s song, made

to float, mid-air, left
unsung: the scent of injured scales -
all seaweed and smoke.

self-portrait as the scar incurred on a summer swimming trip:

The sound said Stop, slicing:
a voice sailing
from the slit of pink
strewn like a stain

on my leg; the wound lies
concealed by skin. Inside
traces of seawater run
like waves, vermilion

as the vessel it invades, red
as refusal, reminder of rust
and that sharp edge of steel:
all salt, all sting.

Two things –

She said “find yourself an anchor”

 

Hurled out, the anchor hit the sea-
bed without sound; the soft
fabric of water, quietly swirling:
around, around, around.

 

Another 6-word story:

He turns to the corpse instead.