the wall is thin

At the conference this morning, an independent researcher
reads her paper about nostalgia and peoples in transit.
She says "doors" to answer in an ambiguous way a question
from the audience; she describes as doors the door 
of airplanes that, like magic, one comes through to places;
also the screen of phones like doors.
My friend J- is having a depression and is remembering
all the people who used to read poetry with him; they are 
all either dead or have gone away. He repeatedly says

come over the house for dinner, but that last time his wife
casually says "I have no friends", repeating it as she leans 
on the doorframe. It troubles me to this day.
What can a person say to someone well past his fifties
with two children not yet even of school age? There are
children in the news feeds, children from far away, dying.
The graduate student who, during consultation, repeatedly

say how she did her work she did her work she did 
her best, her work
was truly only navel gazing 
at her own miseries. Sometimes it angers me

but only because I have been to countries of bone dry misery.
Where people do not have rooms for pathologized miseries, 
caught as they were in systemic and vicious precarity.
It troubles me to this day, how I cannot say
stop it

because I have no right to; because I, too, am flawed with
my own miseries, trifling in the larger scheme of things.
What can I say that will be of interest to you?
When I come home and open the door and see you, beautiful 
calves, legs stretched comfortably while your feet rest 
on the table after a long day at work, your attention now 
on a book, your long braided hair, what is there to say?

I hope there will be no need of words. I will 
fall on the space beside you, a door, a sigh,
so at last there will be no need of words.

note to the secretary

"Dear Gloria, I received your email..." 
and it is frustrating
how the contract is still there, you 
find it indistinguishable from the one
form that is significantly different.
The instructions are clear and simple.
Due to circumstances, the contract

will have to be printed in three copies.
Signed by two offices. Mailed.
To the one office for the action.

The other form, you need to print
in one copy; then have the necessary 
person to sign it. Scan the form, email
it to me. I will take care of it.

"Dear Gloria, I received your email..."
which part confused you?
A part of me understands there must be
a hell of other things to mind, as it
always is the condition everywhere.
I do not know where you are coming from.
I try

to understand. Like the student who is
always asking for consideration, 
an extension, always saying she is doing

the work. If she could have a little more
time, appealing for understanding. 
How she is wrapped with the blanket
of color, dark and struggling. I try to

extend the breadth of understanding.
Push back the word that intends to quell.
The word that is impatient at the slow
to understand, at the constant asking
for understanding. "Dear student,

the world does not stop. I must fail you.
It is not alright to fail. But it is
alright when you cannot make this mark.
Some just don't. It is alright. 
There are other marks you can make."

"Dear Gloria, I received your email..."

be careful of adventures

Be careful of adventures. The point is 
not always the going but the be-coming 
something else, familiar and not. 
The change, something that will happen, 
that has happened, within. We will not

be ever the same again, as the river
is crossed, as the day has ended.
As we have entered the wilderness
of love or of loneliness--the being
that was once our old selves suddenly

turning to be so much younger, so much 
a believer than we have finally become
here on the other side. 

do you sail?

The past few weeks I have been thinking of rowing.
There are two rivers nearby, large 
at this time of the year. 
There is much need to release and attempt to draw 
out into a clear line what has been repeatedly said.

I have stopped taking walks and will have to resume.
I no longer have my dogs.
I sleep and dream and wake up as though 
I haven't slept at all.

St. Patrick's may be a day with a reason.
Maybe one day we will happen to meet, you whiskey 
on hand, me, on the rocks.
And because I do not believe in therapists, 
I wrestle with own shadows,

Fill up the to-do list and bed with heaviness.
Sometimes the day begins with a clear mind
which means nothing and I come down to make tea,
which means coming through a number of doors 
that entering or exiting becomes uncertain.

sitting on the steps, leaving on a bike, at 10

There is a plausible reason why
women (may) tend to believe it is
they who are rejected.
The apparatuses of ideologies
repeatedly soak them so.
But long ago, before all these

we were ten and I said something
that had hurt you and I was sorry
and you wouldn't accept it,
refusing the popsicle offering
already starting to melt in my hand.
Sitting on the steps that summer

I learned who will always be
fearful; and suddenly fearful 
of my own discovery, I 

threw away the offering in anger.
The popsicle's sweetness 
melting away, its bone to the sun.

Was it my first desperation then?
The first grand show 
to the largest audience of one

whose magnificence I discovered
and feared. And she?
She wouldn't even look at me.

So at ten, I took my bike and
learned to leave in pompous glory.

what a wo/man does

What a woman does, it seems, is keep   But who am I to talk about woman?
all windows and doors, holes, slits,   When there is truly no difference.
fissures and cracks, gaps, spaces,     No lines of be-ing. 

open. That is no sin.                  Isn't everyone not and is     
The sense of whole-ness.               The same?

A continuous flow of wind & water,
fire and memory. There is no sin.      An endless lecture on construction,
Only a means to control people, his-   Suspicion and disbelief...

story, ideology...                     Also, indefatigable hope
I have stopped believing               In all its sarcasm and irony.

six hundred lifetimes ago. Not enough  
knows how we receive distorted forms   I am tempted to ask her
after translations: Freud's            Straightforward.

"die Seele" which meant "the soul"     But here, now, much caution
became "mind" in the pages rendered    Almost not unlike young again.

into what seems an undying treatise.
It is difficult to trust               Is it her rejection?
the nuances after a long time.         There is truly no difference.














                                     
                   

Corniche

The road appeared first
before the two packs from the glove compartment
rolled like boulders that fell, one on her lap
the other into the abysmal dark floor. Condoms

two packs of it and in her mind's eye, the corniche
was where they were right that moment, 
perilous turn 
the only thing visible through fog
feet away by headlight; everything else gone

the traffic marsh in the middle of M___ Avenue
and the dinted hood of the car beside theirs.
A woman wading through chest-deep traffic
and the faint honk from somewhere

made it through the window, the glass, to her ear.
Her husband felt the quake, the landslide
saw the boulder on her hand. "Whose this?" 
Not mine he said and gave a name

familiar to her; loose dirt and gravel
she tightened her grip on the phone
searching for the letter and remembering her son
at the backseat with the girlfriend.

All of them supposed to be merry after dinner.
It was all too much a scene from TV
might as well be fiction but the ringing
on the other end and the name's voice answering

"No, not mine." 
Your husband's. 
The tires skid 
and everywhere dust and fog by the cliff 

impossible to see, to breathe--how far deep
was it below--she felt the impassable narrow 
just beyond the turn
anytime now they were to run the light.





For V

And what about at the sacristy

Grandmother, when I was so much younger, brought me
To the sacristy. It was my birthday. A man was there.
He was wearing a gown, wearing a smile, and smelled
Of something else. I was supposed to ask for blessing
Only he was able to give, or so said Grandmother.
This was another lifetime ago, of course, although

I still do remember the door. And the wall. The shape
Of what was dark and deeply engraved on sides of pews.
Grandmother smelling of talc and old lipstick,
The old man with his voice thick as torso.
The noviciate I whispered with one night of songs
Who stepped back into the shadows in fear when told.

The bible has long been unread. The child on afternoons
Reading verses long gone. Still, these days I continue 
To refer what it is: poetry: the word turning flesh.
The old man who was called Father was a stranger.
Grandmother has stories I will never come to know.
I heard a bell outside the sacristy

And with the door I had come into behind me, the man
Turned his back towards a blind corner in the room
And disappeared. There is always another door.

the kitten under the rain

a boy was keeping a kitten
away from the corner of their yard

the kitten squeezed between potted plant
and garbage bin

soaked because it had been raining 
two days and the streets still wet

my dog tried to sniff the kitten
the kitten tried to defend itself

tiny claws tiny fangs all ferociousness
in a tiny life in a tiny body

i showed the boy how to hold 
the kitten by its ear

it will remember its mother
and stop being fierce

so the boy held the kitten
the way its mother did

the kitten remembered its mother
and trusted the boy

and the boy threw the kitten away

Rodovia

Portia passed away yesterday. Word reached me late, 
translating itself from Portuguese to English, 
from the last photo I saw of her (Atlanta, smiling 
beside another colleague on sabbatical leave)
to the photo found after having made my way across

morning coffee, rain (another storm is coming
to these islands), and jazz.
On the news, only a broken motorcycle on highway
only a trace, previous presence. No Portia.

Had I been at the office yesterday I would have had
company to share loss with: this kind 
of irreplaceable space occupied by her joy.
Her youthfulness at 67.

She would have had a temper for mentioning the number--
the only way to cause her age. But such a life! 
Of indefatigable joy.

My Father's Birthday

My father's birthday yesterday, I remember but chose not to
Say anything, choosing to remember why not. 
The backstory is long, kept away in a partially closed room

Not far from where most people stay to admire the garden
Among others. Stoicism is plenty, so is civility.
Keeping surface clear, spotless from hostility as a glass table. 

My mother expected me to call. I am always never 
Too far from anything I chose. She must be upset now
Not replying to my message left like an after thought

Pretending forgetfulness. Of course, she knows and chose
Not to remember. My poor brave mother whose dreams 
Must have been as bright as she before bearing a child

So similar in many ways to the father who, too, must have been
As bright as any bright and dreaming young man before 
He succumbed to secret darknesses.

should i tell you there are two lemons on the table

Should I tell you there are two lemons on the table, the kind
grown in these regions. Taut and green and sour just enough
sweet to be forgiven. Not that they ask for any, being only
what they are. Unlike other things that need telling

For instance, the green ramekin with an apostle spoon 
beside a custom-made glass half filled with water the way
things should be. The mobile phone beside it, black
is quiet and the pen beside it, black, is still.

Other things need reminding. The clock to keep on running.
The ring around a finger, hers, to mean. The roads are long
and web-like and many. And this, a brief brush of wind.
She is passing and is leaving.

this, now, only

The marvel of seeing you

always the first time 

every moment, knowing

we will never again pass

this same way 

as the same persons again.

the gaze

all points in the room point at
the one thing
partially acknowledged and therefore 
there at the corner of my eye

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

wonderer

The existential questions do not end. 
I began asking when I was twelve
would I be the same, I asked mum, 

were my name different, 
had I liked things different.
It was summer on way to gran's;
my favourite shirt on: Sydney
because it fit perfect, was light

blue green embossed sea and sky.
And there was hibiscus blooming
the walkway to gran's; when I looked
up the sky was sea the clearest hue.

And I understood that
maybe it didn't matter at all.   




photo J.Yap

what is not real-- a true

One long marriage after, do you still believe?
I want to, if still possible now. But I am no
Longer the same from that many years ago.
What has been broken, remains

Weathered and less than the one who dreamt.
Who still dares to tread the narrow?
The young, the fool, the brave.

I watch them admirably, listening to
The pounding of my own unbelieving.

what comes next

What comes next is not unknown. It is 
as clear as a clear sky day, sky like glass
blue like you can see through it and what lies
beyond, those blue green fields of cornflowers
a tree, a rainbow, an eternal outdoor
picnic like we dreamed to do on Sundays.
What Sunday-school picture books all say.

What comes next is not unknown. All told
from the pulpit, how the world will become
dust, like flesh into ash, the questions.
Only the living left bereft.

My papers are sent. The board to convene.
Meanwhile. 
I pretend not to pay attention 
to the arthritic bloom in my finger joints.

When I was younger and younger, 
palm to palm my fingers could mimic
the grace of a swimming fish's tail.
I could move one or both ears...

Such feat for a twelve year old!

What comes next is not unknown. 
I tell my dog we will see the vet on Sunday.
Meanwhile I recover from my own bout
with flu. The days are numbered.
What comes next is not unknown.

Only the heart is scared. Brave only by
closing its eyes. To leap into the known.

watching light on a pool of water

Morning finds me reminded of Rwanda
and senseless deaths
the news never runs out of
like fuel for the grand machinery 
of the world (what machinery?)
In a made-up place, quiet and serene
birds call and try find
ways on impersonal pavements
where bamboo is cultured to grow
and kindness a paid service.
Blue bowls of sky and water
meet in a dome.  
This make-believe peace.
Somewhere else a plane 
crashes and closed rooms are alive.
I wait for August, not admitting
anxiety for something brewing.

Last night was a waning moon
and two bottles of strong beer.
I sleep with restless listlessness.
To refuse to do.

the discussion of philosophy

is probably meant not for everyone.  some 
work for the next meal, and this is enough.
the barber whom i see more than the church
tells five reasons to live, in specific order:
college, work, marriage, kids, house.
a man of his world, he is.  tells about his rise
from employee to owner of the salon.
also how to conserve water,
through homebuilt-system of gallons and pipes.
the house needs everything, he says.
and i do not argue with him.  having respect 
for what he does, meticulously.  with heart.

the man does not know hugo or kant.
does not bother with art or phenomenology.
but he thinks not only of his next meal.
and values work.  and honesty.
and also his kids, two of them, whom
i haven't seen.  he probably meant them
when he talks of his house.

and we do talk about the weather, the expected
changes in it.  also the leaving and arriving
that i do, although we never get to specifics.
i do not know if he sees the blue 
of the clear blue sky in this country.
do not know if he thinks of the line
as both phenomenological palimpsest and
illusory divide of consciously built boundaries.

he may not think of these, or of feminism.
although
i think we all do.  between the hours of rain
and morning or the hours of stars and night.
with enough solitude, we all do

discuss philosophy and question
laws, existence, universe, our selves.