January 2012
18 posts
replanting into the dirt. [day 17]
Untitled
I once suffered through a movie about a legless bird with no place to land. Identifying with the hero who fed lovers cheap chocolate and beer. Despised all mothers, side-stepped Manila’s claws, bled over the portal to perfidia. What made me different was how I couldn’t lie still on the table. The last remnant of the dream of the book insisting. It had to be enough. I spat out the...
there are many endings. [day 16]
As you enter that city, you will meet a band of prophets
and they’ll ask if you want to know all your deaths. You have to pay with coffees for each musician and a box of hot wings for them to share. The vocalist with a tambourine is the one who asks you to hold out your hands. Don’t you love a good mystery, she asks her companions. Their skins are all hues of leather from traveling under the sun....
a factory of noise. [day 15]
Postcard to Solita
I would tell you to come back but that’s my jacaranda talking. You have followers now, and you wield coarse weapons with grace. I read your latest dispatch in a pamphlet hidden inside an American romance paperback, your fury pouring out and out. I felt a little ashamed at not choosing the way you did. The novel has several stained pages but what I can decipher is good. // I...
an aspect of the soul, seeking admission. [day 14]
Braised Tendon II
Slanting into agitation because that’s where I need to be. Knocking out bricks of casual chores as long as
I keep my teeth set. Even phone calls about money can be borne with an absent mind. I only fear
reading the letters too much. Already that video has replaced my memory of riding the BART to Oakland
with you. This time he’s not afraid of me, of what I can do...
connecting the visible trace with the absent...
Kundiman para kay Binata
Disintegrating bones.
You can read about them over lunch break in Hing Hay Park.
You want to tell her it won’t end here but you can’t force the underbelly open.
Exiled for the sake of having a home.
Left to the earth, rootlets pull forth through decalcified skylights.
Prized comedy 1: charming leads, a caretaker who steps on a rake, and a sad sucka petrified in...
here we enact a dream state. [day 12]
Postcard to MD
The people of this planet all have dreams to run away from. When you think something could be yours, you’ll swim into the sea. This happened to me too, in your future. Your pawn reminds me of my handheld quartz. Two doors leading to the same hallway and still having to choose. I didn’t know the cost of a glamor so they threw me the fuck out. This happens all the time. It’s so easy...
some love poems do not die. [day 11]
Devoted with thanks to Julie Plug
Fade in the shimmery curtain. The snarls of her hair.
When she reads about lions, it’s because they’re captured or killed.
Rehearsing. How to wash her own face with tenderness reserved for strangers.
I associate with others devoted to wounded web.
We would say it’s a need. Ordinary as dancing hungry animation.
Her precise gesture meaning shields down, ...
how do you break out. [day 10]
Volunteer
Who can blame me for scathing tongue. The work happens in the dark. We joke about being one paycheck away from winning the lotto. Frenzied suppression. Whatever I can get away with. The television snowy from hypoglycemia when the ports shut down. From a distance our problems shove off the rails their blessed train. The work of giving her kids something to hang on to. We’re accused of...
whose voice do you trust? [day 9]
Ang Mapahamak Ay ‘Di Matatakas (The Corrupt Will Not Escape, VivaStar Films, 2082)
As told by Atribida:
You’re invited
to look at me.
I occupy 48
of the film’s
102 minutes.
My gift to you.
Recall the first
kiss between heroes.
After eluding
the mook squad,
creeping into Li Po’s
basement party.
No shoulder injury
for me to heal,
no consoling
twitter for his
high-stakes wiseguy
...
a swipe on the other, down to the emotion. [day 8]
Volunteer
But I’m her favorite girl.
The one who escorts her home and combs out the knots in her calves.
Who’s in a crash course for rich-people eating, new england exorcisms, and a little piano. Who peeks at her calendar and commits all free nights to memory. Who engages in her ritual emptying out of poisonous thorns.
She taught me the cardinal techniques.
I worshiped her eye opening as she...
rescue the living ephemera. [day 7]
Postcard to JGV
Attention commands what is holy. In a time of mirrors and soft speech
I bound myself to the book and all its refractions: child-body, dalaga-body,
cinephile, runaway, android, ghost. Equilateral with all future imaginary selves
because I’m still waiting for documentation. Is it haunted where you exist?
Sleepless in killing summer? I want to wake up on that island and reject...
hole all the texts [day 6]
Selected Lines from 5 Minutes at an Art Party at 111 Minna, 2010
But damn she was gorgeous. I mean even in the shadows.
—me a drink and I’ll read it for you—
I had Electronica call me five minutes before she got there so I could slip out the back.
Perfect, perfect triangles—
If they have any of the lychee ones left.
—pleather jumper like we was at ruby skye or some shit—
You sound like...
a body sometimes outside language. [day 5]
Dear Ten,
I can’t stand being photographed. From girl to girl to a house where so much as a breeze against my neck would spill over new bones and blood, I have been so many people. My face is a trick. My body schemes against me: today I couldn’t unlock my right hand. If you were here I would tell you, but we no longer inhabit the same country. Because I stayed indoors you left thinking you knew...
I'm going to be a little late with the post today...
Hope to update by 1pm PST. Thanks for your patience.
we practice saying yes. [day 4]
One Hit Wonder
My anchor, I’m singing for you again.
Alone in my room or my younger, sweeter ghost piping through the radio.
How many devotions to turn around the filthy summer anthem so it speaks only to us?
When I call, your thinning blood moves me to an empty field. Tall emerald sways.
Stay on the line.
How I can press my shoulder to the brick of this narrow hallway and reach for...
what are your intentions, what do you give up. ...
Serenade in exile
I.
One thinks this happens only to other people. I was a child
named unshakeable then.
Recognition poured holy in me by a young mother’s chords.
I wear her bracelets now, and a lovelier mane.
Crossing 23 planes to your bed, fast as wheels can turn.
Even if the Excelsior is no longer mine.
II.
Silver sardines for you.
Letters broke open for you.
Employment as...
the blueprints for this room [day 2]
Future Prince
Calling out to you after the mangled credits roll,
embittered by extra hours of christmas delivery. Yet this
intact spine: proof: you held yourself as a redfaced lamp,
a knight of satin electronics. As our family wished you would.
My girl, have a brandy. Let all the ammunition sink.
I’ll walk us through the city of animals. What hackles them in your time is just
a tipping...
Begin with what you love. [day 1]
‘I am writing to you because it is private and separate, like thinking.’—Bhanu Kapil
‘The experience of eros as lack alerts a person to the boundaries of himself, of other people, of things in general. It is the edge separating my tongue from the taste for which it longs that teaches me what an edge is. Like Sappho’s adjective glukupikron, the moment of desire is one...
December 2011
1 post
7107: A Collaborative Poetry Project
Welcome to 7107, a collaborative poetry project beginning January 2, 2012.
This project is inspired by Ching-In Chen’s Collaborative Manifesto Remix last summer, in which participants wrote poetry from shared generative prompts. I found the experience of writing in collaboration incredibly inspiring, and as the days went on, full of surprise and amazement at the works that were...