inside the ribcage

Here, at this time of the year, the sky flatten 
the hours. It becomes almost impossible to tell,
sometimes, the time unless you press your pulse

to know you are still among the living. Here,
where every thing has become so efficient and
then not. The selvedges are ripped, if one cares

to notice. Such small things like the seeing
through an opened window the lovers, now kissing,
have forgotten to close. Most of the time

every one has learned to move with flat-line
hearts that have become so civil, so tirelessly
euphemistic that at times I am beginning to feel

this calamity, incredibly scripted, un-human.

when i will meet you

When finally I will meet you, 
I imagine there will be 
nothing to utter and many
distances to cross. 
Each of us a world
too long alone on its own,
making and conversing
with bird shadows on walls.
We will be right across
each other on the table,
wondering how it all
has come to this, singular
moment of meeting.
To begin the real knowing
is to begin the crossing 
from whichever previously
we know as real or unreal.
How will I say the first word.
How will we begin

sometimes bolder

after a number of drinks
and right before
a single bed

a conversation with
half-meant debate
about the matter

of it all: art
and change
to what

extents

can men go on 
and on ignoring
libido 

loneliness
and the liveable
change

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."



















 

in keeping with silence

In keeping with silence, the idea of
another city is no longer the same.
There is an absence that was once
not there, a kind of empty in the air.
No else knows of this, even though
surely there are those who feel
a certain trace on their skin. A damp
weight of memory that memory has
already forgotten the name.  Some-

times, when enough of us has gather
into a circle of remembering, we can
string together the beads of stories
recollected from dampness in the air.
Re-creating the city from another time.
From the days when we were young
once immortal in love.

Into the place where the answers are kept

HOW TO LIKE IT

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let's go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let's tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let's pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let's dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn't been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let's go down to the diner and sniff
people's legs. Let's stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man's mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let's go to sleep. Let's lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he'll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he'll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let's just go back inside.
Let's not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let's go make a sandwich.
Let's make the tallest sandwich anyone's ever seen.
And that's what they do and that's where the man's
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

--Stephen Dobyns

Like

pomegranates

do we still look for Virtuous? the tribe
has long vanished.  gone after its
last, and last farewell parade.  how 
they had come together, a flock 

merging from crevices of mountains 
wet mounds of rivers, wides from flatlands. 
i look past the large glass windows
of the 15th floor and wonder

was Virtuous ever real at all? or are they
as real as stories of nymphs
no longer believed and yet, men
dreamed in the kept hollows 

of their minds? do we still look for 
Virtuous? on the streets, there could be
a nun, a student, a lawyer,  a thief,
mother, father, children, aunts, uncles

a strange array of the Less
--this whole world--including ourselves
who, after having bitten 
the pomegranates of the underworld

attempts every day
to rise Virtuous above the self.

cape town

if you come to visit a city, do so not as a tourist.  
else there will be many things you will miss.  

the tourist is always asked to see
the many beautiful things,  

of course he is also asked to see
the beautiful only.

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

there is a street

i ask her to read a piece of the new work, the work about a city, re-imagined, not appearing the way it is, appearing translucent, unreal.  she is a local, in many ways, i am not.  i think i see the city only now, even though, have seen it many times in dreams, in re-imaginings.  there are many things i have missed, many things not known.  she used to take me to the streets and show the alleys, the secret corners of Chinese men and herb women, among others.  streets for textiles only, streets for glass, streets for cutflowers, streets for these, and streets for that.  streets for motor bolts, for rubber slippers, for half starving children, for pet fish, for castoff rags, for fiber ropes, for stolen goods, for dogs, for women, for fruits, including the seasonal.  also including the dark and darker stories i can only imagine under the naked bright noon.  she had spent fragments of childhood in these streets, their eccentricities.  i had spent hours with her, held by hand lest i get lost.  the streets, the entire city, always a novelty.  i ask her to read a piece of the new work, the work about a city, re-imagined, not appearing the way it is, appearing translucent.  this is unreal, she says on the piece about the infamous red light street.  i ask why: is it because you want realism?  she cannot make up her mind. 

today in the middle of nowhere

Today in the middle of nowhere, I held your imaginary hand
the van was dark, crowded with strangers familiar with each other  
the ride, long.  We did not talk.  You looked outside the window
I tried not to listen to the news, public television blaring too loud.
South of this country, men are shooting each other over religion.
Up north, there is talk about plunder.  Somewhere, three men
raped a twelve-year girl, who had fallen asleep with her homework
before she was carried off to a rooftop.  Neighbors thought
she was duffel bag.  Her mother cried, the media feasted.
I wanted to bury my face on your hair.
Heave my burden.
But then you turned and smiled a weary smile,
the van was crossing the bridge and the city lights
looked near from a distance.




shane

Syracuse

City with the loveliest name, Syracuse;
don't let me forget the dim
antiquity of your side streets, the pouting balconies
that once caged Spanish ladies,
the way the sea breaks on Ortygia's walls.

Plato met defeat here, escaped with his life,
what can be said about  us, unreal tourists.
Your cathedral rose atop a Greek temple
and still grows, but very slowly,
like the heavy pleas of beggars and widows.

At midnight fishing boats radiate
sharp light, demanding prayers
for the perished, the lonely, for you,
city abandoned on a continent's rim,
and for us, imprisoned in our travels.






by Adam Zagajewski 

flooding in another city

almost a week now national news tell nothing new:  flood and flooding somewhere:  the southwest monsoon; torrential rains; collapsed dykes and dams; overflowed rivers; and waves after waves of mudwaters having made their ways to the cities, mudwaters with the strength of twenty or more feet deep burying roads and cars and trucks and houses.  boats hovered by houses' roofs.  no Ark.  and crowding at the centers, the countless evacuees.

the local news tell a different story:  the collision of an oil tanker and a passenger boat.  more than two hundred missing.  a pregnant woman found floating at sea.  and that it has been more than seventy-two hours and so operations have changed from search-and-rescue to search-and-retrieval.  

government, as expected, is diligent on working on blame and accountability: they are out looking for a woman believed to have siphoned money.

the champion church is doing nothing.  while all the weather forecasters tell everyone to continue expecting rain.

but in this place, how the full moon shines quiet and bright.  i try.  the airline tickets lying in wait.














 

copenhagen

Copenhagen is not a real city, he says, reviewing the number of murders and theft, the number of people that is less 

than the population of stricken children in the humid city where we were 
eating eggs benedict in a place that smelled of vanilla.  A waiter named Denmark 

came to pour water.  The name on the tag on the crisp white shirt.  Only in this country, he adds, noticing the name.  I only thought what a happenstance--having known 

such penchant for first names:  a Xhemei, an Angus, a Lucy Pearl, a Lefer, a Lady Goddess,  
a Lady Macbeth, a Sir Lord, a Phil.Mighty, a Douglas McArthur, an Avril Lavigne.

Copenhagen is not a real city, he says again, pointing at more cities and stopping, perhaps
not without a touch, the cities in his Italy.  The man missing his home.

the roles we play

Linda, who said she can't leave New York there's just so much theater there, said I see her when I could, when she's back, there, or here, or wherever it is she is referring to, as home.  

She said why do I not leave this place.  I said why do you return.  I did not ask do you feel like a stranger here?  I do.  Every time I return, the place has something new.  And I get lost:  the streets

have a habit of changing names.  The landmarks have the habit of changing faces.  Old places disappear, always something new.  When I first saw Linda, she was not 

the picture of the name in mind.  She was otherwise; and warm and bubbly; meticulous about each step of the process.  I was not surprised.  Long years in the theater have a way of creeping

itself into the skin.  In a workshop she tells the participants the cliche among us they may not yet know:  we're all actors playing our lives in roles.  Linda says we are friends, we are lovers, we are

wives, we are children, we are mothers.  One time she whispered I am feeling cold: I think I might be sick.  She asked for a pill and I gave her a glass of lukewarm water with it.  She curled herself 

on the couch, like a fetus.  I turned off the lights and closed the door.
What are we when we are alone?  What role do we play in front of the wall?

long days

the days seem to have become
longer than the last time they were.
i don't know.  we could easily count 
with several fingers the reasons why 

at the end of the day, we seem to
have become older.  
and older.  wearier 
than the last time we remember.


















 

 

the places where i imagine us

The Places In Which I Imagine Us




I'm not sure how many of them exist. 
Like that cabin in an unexplained clearing
in an island off the coast of Nova Scotia.
The fireplace sounding like a page
of sheet music being eternally crumpled,
as if to say to us: Sit down. Read a little.
The bed is made and we’ll make a bet
to see who gets to ruin its serenity
first. Then maybe I will kiss you.
Then maybe I will step in the shower
and explore the lengthy chapters
of the book of happiness. Then maybe
I’ll get out and lie down and whisper to you
the thousand feelings I cannot name
zipping around my body like molecules.
I will ask you to tell me a story
about your childhood, or ask you to look
outside at all the trees we don’t recognize.
All the colors we didn’t know existed.
All the while I cannot say where you are
in the cabin. Or outside of it.
I have stopped trying to imagine
the entirety of you. Or at least trying
to fit it into a poem. But still on rainy days
I catch myself dwelling there
on the drifting island of my heart, imagining
that somewhere, you are practicing
all the words you know for longing, as I am
doing in the language of poem,
very rarely spoken outside its country
of sorrow. But maybe happiness as it is,
and longing, and love, can make it.
Can be a good poem. Or maybe you have ruined me
exactly the way I wanted you to.

 


by Gian Lao




                

strangers

one of the interesting meetings i've had was meeting at random someone named Albert.  this was in a bookshop cafe while i was waiting to meet a lady friend.  i don't remember anymore how the conversation started; although i do know i didn't start it.  the man was at the next table, one of those extrovert types who, when they find themselves alone, are easy to begin conversations and find common grounds with strangers.  

we found we were both temporarily in the city: his flight out was the next day, he said; mine was that coming weekend.  that also, surprisingly, we were both from the same university; graduates of different years.  the world is small.

we swap university stories:  student organizations we participated in; university places; graduate scholarships.  how we moved forward since then.  when i noticed the book titles he was holding, he said he had done service: twice in Afghanistan, he said.  said he was now in the UN.  told service stories.  noticeable how his books were all about the war; and even though i wondered why he would care to read more about these when he's been there himself, i didn't ask.

so he said he was also once married.  to a jewish woman.  that the divorce was not messy; that they remained friends; that he would still meet her between now and then and give her gifts between now and then; that he once gave her an antique-something because she collects antiques; etc.

my ladyfriend rang, said she was close, walking her way to the bookshop.  i said i'll meet her at the door and wrapped the conversation with Albert:  how we might happen to meet again, one in a hundred, maybe five, given the crossing of latitudes, but who knows? haha! 

she was by the doorway when i saw her.  she must have seen the man because she asked who i was talking with a table away from mine.  and before i could answer, she said, "a military man?"  not entirely wrong, not entirely correct either.  i asked, "what made you think so?"

she said, "obvious from the way he looks."


 

sun through windows

one goes north, or south, and sometimes it becomes indistinguishable where.  you stay  now east, although 
some parts of you west.  and there remains 
places that maybe even cartographers do not know:

at the end of a shore, bare feet kissed by waves.  
at the edge of a cliff with wind on ears.  
some sky at the verge of waking up at the break of dawn.  
beside a window morning light seeping through. 
hunching over a garden now just before sunup, 
tending a patch of grass before it gets wild.

what is the Golden Fleece?

The lost
The seeking
Argonaut


At the end of each day's hours, in a world's corner where we retreat  to hide at our most vulnerable time, at that most peculiar instance of only a few breath spaces long between waking and sleeping, 

We do sometimes remember.  
And see this strange world as it is: 

A large labyrinth city where we, the argonauts, seeking the fleece, have gone lost, 

Trapped in between sky high walls
working hours
job descriptions
streets, society, and survival.

Perhaps, the minotaur is no beast, no Other, 

But Us,

Who, having lived longer 
 

And longer in this maze 
have turned into 
memory-less beasts.


Where is the skein of thread?
Where is Ariadne?
Where is the Fleece?