gentle non-fiction

One type of genre I step back from is the personal essay. In spite of ideas such as fossilised written selves vis-à-vis transitory selves, the certainty and nuance of an elusive self migrating in space and time, the lies of protracted drama in the name of art, the unreliable "I", other beautiful and convincing arguments the many number of friends writing in the genre say, I remain a step away.

Non-fiction, no matter how gentle, how sincere, tells too much. A freshman's first draft of narrative essay tells how she was physically abused by a father, how she cried in the middle of a cornfield, thought of running away from home, decided to stay. Another draft of a Haiyan survivor's account.

Sometimes I pretend not to wrestle with the question why. 

No matter sometimes I feel something surfacing from the well of quiet to be written this way, in this genre of gentle sincerity. There, a lump in the throat. A remembering of something that is, perhaps, being slowly forgiven by the self within the self, in spite of the self.

And yet, I step away. Less courageous than a nine-year-old battered by her father at the cornfield.

watching in the dark

It is Friday and it is raining and I do not want to begin 
a line about the weather, but the drops are heavy
the TV repeats news from last night about the forty-four 
dead young men, soldiers 
no older than any son in M'danao.  Mothers weep 
fathers trying to close as many doors as possible
from the inside, no country.  No one
understands deaths of young ones

of children, of dogs.  The neighbour who
padlocked his house and never returned for his 
Lab in a kennel all of us could hear baying silently
patient even in dying, thirst and hunger none of us could help. 

A Whisper of Storm (a pastiche)

Three days of rain             Early sunrises             Early darks

On this listless December         On this island of rain
There is a whisper of a storm not half an ocean away

Nights the beggars pretend not to beg by carolling
The city gates have opened         The strays have come to stay


                                          *  *  *


I drove all the way to your neighbourhood and found
You were not yet home         Your new wife        The one I haven't met

She answered the door and knew my name
She looked different from the last two I've known

What leads you 
one woman to another?  

"I just dropped by.  Friday and thought maybe a couple of beers."
I drove around town


                                          *  *  *


Finally at 65         G will be leaving for Spain            to retire
We threw a celebration for her leaving or for her life        both

T made quiche
And after everything        we all had tea

Of course nobody really talks about leaving


                                         *  *  *

And

Adam wrote to Eve
"I am breathless and anxious and sick with dread and desire."



















 

feet

The bedsheets are fresh.

After walking the dogs
on a clear windy night,
I prop up my feet
on the couch. Tired.

The dogs fall asleep again.

Tomorrow a long list
of things to do that
do not ever run out.
Sometimes you wonder
if they really 
are as important as 
they appear to be:
the immediate world
to crumble if undone.

Suppose one day I don't

move my exhausted feet 
return phone calls 
or make presences.
See without me
wheels still turn.

temperatures

1.  Monday morning; writing desk by window.  Gray white sky morning; clear breeze.  Sent instructions to secretary; most likely to stay home for a week (i hope not).

2.  Still woke up at 4 this morning, even if cannot run; how the body keeps its own clock; took med instead, talked to the dogs, made coffee, toast bread.

3.  News says what may be the coldest place in this tropical country made 6 degrees; it'll have to live with 9 degrees for the next few days; in this normally humid province, a mountain place along the transnational highway is having 16 degrees; word has reached the city already three elderly died from the cold; that farm animals are dying is old news.

4.  Was it a few days ago I saw a boy that must be no more than twelve pass the M* bridge, shirtless and barefoot, on the way to a junkshop by the obvious weight of his burden, rusty metal junk balanced on his head.

5.  Three things gnaw me since I moved about two years ago in this little island, supposedly to be close to sea:  poverty as clear as broad daylight, a resigned people to an apathetic government, a cruelty to dogs... Last week, I was asked to give a talk to young writers about the importance of poetry, a part of me is unconvinced.  This coming weekend (i hope i will be well by then) I will fly to N* invited to talk again about writing...do I really believe it can change the world to a better place?  Maybe.  But never in a writer's lifetime.

between four and six

Afternoons on Mondays and Thursdays between four and six,
I teach a class of "internally displaced."  Especially opened 
for university students who survived the storm, who wanted to
          move          forward         with the Haiyan on their backs.  

Their stories of back home are still on our TVs.  
On prime time news, their gutted city and wiped out towns, 
their people, families, love ones           bodies 
unidentified in body bags       while the rest 

of us watch while eating our dinner.  How art is a therapy. 

 A week ago in an earthquaked city still pitch dark
without electricity, even fireflies, children held on
to Crayolas and brushes to story-tell.  The artists 
supposed to show them how, ended as audience instead

or bearers of stories of stones the children had carried
like body bags on their backs.  Losing their parents,
siblings, friends.  Some or all of the people they knew.
Horrors no longer unfamiliar to us.

What is the human spirit really made of?

In class, the conversation of the day was Another Country,
a story about the many kinds of displacement, 
the many kinds of understanding      home and       
love.  Its varied complications.  Nobody talks

about death       and the drowned bodies on the streets
the looting, the aftermath, the forced migrations,
homesickness like palpable emptiness       
in this another country with its strange language.

How art is therapy.  How it tears raw

wounds just trying to heal         a day at a time.
A kind of patient confrontation.  "Too soon," I had said
to the student guidance counselor whose eyes
have long been softened on the edges by blunt blows.

She said yes and no.

after city

The children are dead.
The news does not say
even though their bodies
are all around.  In parts,
in missing wholes.
The entire city has begun
to smell of loss.  There are 
arms, dismembered, waving
at Red Cross trucks carrying relief.
Too many bare feet, caught 
cold in the act of running.
Everybody is howling.
But there are not enough names.

At the centers, the lines are long
for food, for water, for medicine.
Also for calling God.
But the telecommunications 
are all down.  
And the entire city is dark.








(Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, Philippines)
 







by shane