connecting the visible trace with the absent thing. [day 13]

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 the basement.

You don’t wait for the call anymore but
expect it like the young men’s allegiance.

This scares you. It inflames the joints of your fingers.

Prized comedy 2: a menace and his crew hide
a putrid suitcase at his menopausal sister’s wedding.

The boys will praise you for your anger,
not knowing how it collapsed your nights.

You think about the girl from Ateneo again.

You called on her birthday for over a decade
and then just stopped.

Knowing there would be no warmer friendship.

Running out of good news to invent.

Constructed with words from Bushra Rehman, Kimberly Alidio, Jai Arun Ravine, Ching-in Chen, Akilah Oliver, and Italo Calvino.

* * *

Prompts

“I think the technology of the poem, its ability to be honest yet deceptive at the same time, allows us a space to say ‘I’m sorry.’ I think most of my poems are really just apologies—often to myself.”—Ocean Vuong at The Collagist

Sarah Gambito reads for the PAWA Arkipelago Reading Series (November 2009): 

Bushra Rehman:   “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” Harvey Milk

Kimberly Alidio:   via Christine Hou:

I will not remember, only describe.
This is the first time I’ve really wanted to be accurate.

—Lisa Robertson, “Face/”

Jai Arun Ravine:

I pulled out my copy of Italo Calvino’s SIX MEMOS FOR THE NEXT MILLENNIUM, of which the sixth was unfinished at the time of his death. In “Exactitude” (I wrote “!!!” next to this paragraph circa 2002-3): “The word connects the visible trace with the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail emergency bridge flung over an abyss. For this reason, the proper use of language, for me personally, is one that enables us to approach things (present or absent) with discretion, attention, and caution, with respect for what things (present or absent) communicate without words.” (Reminds me of our (silent) thread.) In “Multiplicity”: “In the tram going home [s/he] remembered this.” 

Ching-In Chen: My heart is breaking / I cannot sleep / I love a man / who’s afraid of me / he believes if he doesn’t / stand guard with a knife / I’ll make him my slave / for the rest of his life – from Lhasa de Sela’s “Anywhere On This Road”:

Housekeeping

Please post in the comments section of this blog entry with: 1) your writing in response to today’s writing(s) and 2) a prompt or question to share for tomorrow.

And if the comments are down, feel free to send your work to arkipelagirl [at] gmail.com, and I’ll post for you when the comments are fixed. 

Full info on the process and this project can be found at this page.