February 2012
1 post
January 2012
8 posts
330/ January 8, 2012 - Advice, baby.
Tell your girlthing, the one you met at that poetry class in U.P., to avoid this entry at all costs. Or else she’ll know that the teal Vespa she gets to ride with you was partially paid for by me. Partially. Everything’s been repaid, of course, but admit that there are things you wouldn’t have if not for me. For example, the capacity to love back. (Don’t tell her that each...
329/ January 7, 2012 - We sleep on streets.
Everyday, I wake up to find new bruises on my body— it’s either I have a rare disease or I’ve been skating in my sleep. I try to make light of heavy things. Benadryl and books, beer and why I don’t drink it, the body and a boy I never intended to meet. I’m a walking Kleenex advertisement and people still don’t know how to ask the right questions. What...
327/ January 1, 2012 - Fare/wells
“Did you know that MacArthur was my brother?”, and my grandfather lets out a raspy laugh as if the oxygen in him had turned into a chain rattling up and down his throat. He says a lot of funny things too— he mixes up our names and he claims he sees children dart across our living room when no one’s there. It is time, it’s about time, it will be time. The start of new...
326 / why dates are meaningless, forced to be...
D. gave me this typewriter for Christmas to replace the one that A. took away. Or perhaps he gave it to me for the simple reason that he knew it would make me happy. Is it necessary to mention context— the negotiation made, the unfair barter, the restlessness after? If this were a story, then, yes, the objective phrase for the dramatic situation would be to replace. But I’ve stopped...
December 2011
1 post
Interlude 2
It’s a slow Thursday night and this song just came on shuffle. The boy’s taking a nap and his arm is draped over my lap. He looks pensive when he sleeps, like he’s solving a problem or watching Fellini. In the cab the other night, he was explaining to me how it was possible to break glass when sound reached extremely high pitches, but only when the frequency and wavelength of the sound and the...
November 2011
6 posts
324/ of weight
I would like to believe the scale is always in our favor: light from delight, heavy from happy. We start and break diets as if we needed to reconfigure how much of each other we really need. More of your warmth, less of your petrifying mood swings, and we know we’re doing alright, more or less.
323/ of time
Ignore the alarm this time, darling, I plead with my eyes but we’re both too awake to rekindle sleep. How cruel is it that we have lost all our mornings. We wake when it’s too late for early birdsong trailing behind the whispering of dawn. Instead, the city is alive and uptight before us, reminding us of work and the ten-hour trudging ahead. Forget the loose romance of breakfast; we’ll eat...
322/ of hearing (Part of the series "On the sudden...
There are days we don’t hear each other very well and there are days when we simply don’t listen. I am used to the depth of silences, the wordless comfort in nods and gazes sent wistfully from across a room. You, you are a clatter of praise, a clamouring for attention resounding like the days we’ve agreed not to count but have counted anyway. When I think of you, I hear the happiness of childhood....
October 2011
4 posts
Apologetic
The slow days are gone. In the mornings or late noons that I awake, I take one look at time and lose it. Before my feet could touch the floor, I turn into a bird, and throughout the day there are no branches. I do catch myself in pensive moments: perched on the car window is a thought paused in traffic, the strain of an ambulance siren slices through the silence, and in the middle of work I...
321/ September 23, 2011 - Parallelism
“The heart is a small, cracked cup,” we read together. “Easy to fill, impossible to keep full.” We are drinking coffee. Outside, it begins to rain. The road is darkened by drizzle; small splashes turn into small ponds, and soon, the red roofs turn brown, the blue buildings are grey. I’m starting to lose count of the tiny things that have colored us, have become ours....
319/ September 21, 2011 - Properties
I know, I know, I know I’ve said I was a body of water, liquid to your touch and harbor to your name, but it also meant I could not be contained. I love the way water loves, yes, I fill spaces in you that you thought no longer existed: here, a lost love for maps, an ignited rapport with music, and the four-hour drives up north where the clouds perch on the hood of your car. “You...
September 2011
8 posts
317/ September 12, 2011 - Laws of Science:...
Characterized by the spread of particles from an area of higher concentration to that of a lower concentration. Particles spreading farther apart. We hold the ability for widespread dispersal; we learn how to expand. Let us start with a closed space. For example, your car— and the walks to the parking lot and the marco-polo hide-and-seeking before we find it (W plate, silver, check). We...
315/ September 8, 2011
Dear friend / relative / relatively close friend / former love, I acknowledge that I have changed in ways beyond mannerisms and measurable gaits. Each time someone tells me “you’re different now” I want to snap back with “when was I the same?” Of course I’ve changed. I got my heart run over by a speeding bullet train. For time with family, now I have only about...
313/ September 7, 2011
I learned too late that what we were had nothing to do with courage. We were far too comfortable with being cowards. We did not dare, disturb, displace. This I learned too late. There was one dinner where we sat and said nothing, nothing significant, until we saw the cardboard bottoms of our plates. I told myself it was okay if I feared we were turning into an old, deaf couple who no longer heard...
312/ September 6, 2011
“I think I swallowed a tornado.” And it was with this realization that the world buckled down and knelt. I felt that it understood how completely ravaged I had become: tiny, whimpering, sleepless, triumphant. I had done everything possible in the past two months except remember how not to lose myself. I’ve lost myself in work; there are days I address myself with my title totally...
1 tag
311/ September 1, 2011 - Birthmonth
August 2011
13 posts
309/ August 20, 2011 - How do you write an ending?...
Instead of writing to you, I write to your mother. I tell her everything we ever told and did and promised and broke. I tell her how every day I tried to make your sad eyes happy. How those days in the hospital were proud days and just a little bit weary. How I took what was yours and wrote it on my body permanently. How I will not regret doing that. How I will not regret anything even if I forget...
307/ August 18, 2011 - How do you write an ending?...
I go to the old places but I don’t see you in the park benches, the bike trails, the picnic steps and the blinding sunclouds at dusk, the football field and spilled watermelon shakes, the dusty old buildings and the rust under the hood of your car, or the imperial drive-thru, the incandescent grocery cart before a movie night, the movie night and the misunderstanding of characters after...
306/ August 17, 2011 - How do you write an ending?...
There is a letter I must write you, Mr. Reteche, because Zita in the short story never wrote you back. I know the cowardice behind tearing up a letter; I know the courage of piecing it back. How do you mend words torn. This is a lesson I refuse to learn. And so I am delayed by a cold and by the coldness of borrowed things. Your typewriter lies unused. There is a scarf here that smells of your...
305/ August 14, 2011 - Instructions for recycling...
“dear c., the moon is at its brightest, full before it wanes, tonight i took the ship moored on your ankle and set sail for the verse on your arm.” You have written more letters to me now that we are no longer together. You write to me, almost daily, with the constance of a gardener tending to the potential of quiet life. You write to me on the condition that I never write back, and...
304/ August 13, 2011 - Instructions for the sailor...
“dear c. (sea), when i see you i see the the steam bend and the brook clear and wave upon wave upon wave, and the evening glisten, the trickle, the slip, the glimmer and ripple; this is your body of water and i do not know how to travel you (yet)” And wave upon wave upon wave, our bodies lost to the undercurrent of time. The short stories could not save our lives; the moon was a clock...
303/ August 12, 2011 - Instructions for the...
Heart, be fair. Be light and fleeting like the wind shutting a door in the middle of an afternoon meant for quiet reading. Shut the door for good. Be brave like darkness. Be brave like those traversing darkness. Heart, be fair, be light, be brave. “we could bring the pick-up and bring pillows and lie down at the back and look up and not touch and just talk and talk and you can say anything...
301/ August 9, 2011 - A Plain White Card
FRONT: WHITE SPACE AND RED LINES DOTTED FOR NAMES AND PLACES AND WISHES. THE TEXT IS IN KANJI. THIS IS A POSTCARD FROM TAIPEI. I write out of urgency. There is a blackout all over Gainsborough; it stretches past Dryden Street and Darwin Drive, and I am writing hurriedly, […] there are four twinkling candles to my right, they are of the Church-peso kind. These faint lights remind me of your...
300/ August 8, 2011 - The Poetry Room
FRONT: STAIRS TO CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE’S POETRY ROOM— (in my handwriting) where nobody cared that the person next to him called his underclass dirty laundry poe, wet, tree. Dear lover— lover of watermelon, These are pauses of fifteen-day intervals; imagine the thoughtspace given between each postcard. No, I did not wait for your response, the conversation is not up to us, it is...
299/ August 7, 2011 - Cassady & Kerouac
FRONT: A PICTURE OF JACK KEROUAC WITH ONE ARM DRAPED OVER NEAL CASSADY. LONG SLEEVES, RUMPLED SLACKS. TAKEN BY CAROLYN CASSADY, SAN FRANCISCO, 1952. To my on-the-road riveter, across the ocean, This is the first postcard I’ve ever written anyone. This is also the first time I’ve been away, away, and so the need to entrust the life of these words to the postal system. […] Really,...
298/ August 6, 2011 - Scratched stamp, teal...
I asked him to return my postcards and now that I have them, I do not know why I wanted them at all. The stamped date on the envelope daunts me and mocks the very memory of myself no longer my-self. What do I do with all these words? Unlike him, my letters are meant only for the one being written to. How do I take them back? How do I give them to someone else? How do I kill the love in a letter?...
July 2011
6 posts
297/ August 1, 2011 - Demo 1
The boy I like is playing the piano as I work. There’s a tenderness here I cannot touch yet— the song in the air vanishes when I try to hold it, gone like a wisp of smoke. A cigarette dangles precariously on his lip and he watches only his hands as he hits the notes: a) this is a song about happiness, b) this is a song about the happiness you stole, c) this is a song about happiness I...
296/ July 23, 2011 - Cause of death: unknown /...
Dear friend, there are times I want to be mountainous or momentous but momentary (the ever meanwhile) is all I ever acquire. The fire inside me does not burn, and so I write to you for lessons on scorching. Singe me with your singing— you with the seaside view and the childhood swing set tied to intertwined trees of memory. Free from inertia, the friction of the soul. Yesterday, I read a...
295/ July 17, 2011 - Shared Sleep
You told me a story about a country where they had forbidden sleep. The man who loved this woman took her to a room hidden from the world, and there, they read each other stories and sang lullabies in hushed voices until their hearts stretched open for the homecoming of sleep. In the stillness of that moment, after years and years of its absence, they became the first ones to dream. This is what I...
294/ July 16, 2011 - Hotel Rooms, 2
I like the lightness of these unfamiliar blankets, the scent of white sheets, and the unrelenting indulgence of these pillows pliant to dreams. I swim in the endearment of this foreign place. I remember how I felt the first time I climbed the shore of your bed. I felt light and unrelenting as you were indulgent, pliant to desire. And I paddle away from this thought with the force of a coming...
293/ July 15, 2011 - Hotel Rooms, 1
My house has been split into three places; there are days when I do not know where to go home. The one in New Manila is far and forlorn (like family), and the one in 1st Avenue bears a closeness that incites claustrophobia. The third one is his room where my toothbrush is perched upon his shelf, beside the book I gave but he might never read. This is how I formed the habit of checking into hotel...
292/ July 2, 2011 - Postmaster error
Please understand that this is simply what he does— a protocol to deal with pain, a modus to make up for misery. He chops letters in half, beheads them, his able pen slicing through a slaughter of words (dead to begin with, he says, he reuses old love letters). He hardly uses “Dear” when he begins writing. He never addresses, or he does not mean to. He writes letters not for anyone except himself....
June 2011
10 posts
291/ June 26, 2011 - Again: we end.
“And where do they end, your sea and sky?” At the tip of a beginning. On the threshold of change. At the edge of a stage, the outline of a phase— a face. To cycle on is the realization that there are no such things as endings. We will hop on from half moons to full moons, teetering on thresholds, waiting to break new shores. To each night is a morning, and to mornings there is...
290/ June 25, 2011 - We begin: again.
“Where does the sea begin?” Or when you paint or draw the sea, how do you start? Water has no shape even on paper. It can only be contained by a form assigned to her. An old painter from a book said that when he painted the ocean, he began with ships. Ships were the eyes of the ocean. Look for the outlines of sails in the horizon. When you know where they are, you can begin....
289/ June 24, 2011 - Lunar cycles
During the June 15 eclipse: I looked up from my left arm to the sky and smiled. The moons on my skin were an accidental tribute to the eclipse. The universe exists and I am part of it. The moon moves as I move. Perhaps there are no accidents. *** To cycle on. To forge on with the expectation of loss, the acceptance of return. Because there are seasons and tides, and everything grows and is...