You’ re clean shaven in this country
where trees grow beards of moss,
where even bank tellers
look a little like banditos
in vests as pungent as sweatsuits.
Still, you prefer the vegetable air
to almost any other place on the map.
After the heart attack,
you considered Paris —
the flying buttresses,
the fractured light of its cathedrals;
I wrap the blue towel
after washing,
around the damp
weight of hair, bulky
as a sleeping cat,
and sit out on the porch.
Still dripping water,
it’ ll be dry by supper,
by the time the dust
settles off your shoes,
though it’ s only five
past noon. Think
The sun-face looms over me, gigantic-hot, smelling
of iron. Its rays striated,
rasp-red and muscled as the tongues
of iguanas. They are trying to lick away
my name. But I
am not afraid. I hold in my hands
(where did I get them)
enormous blue scissors that are
just the color of sky. I bring
the blades together, like
a song. The rays fall around me
curling a bit, like dried carrot peel. A far sound
in the air — fire
or rain? And when I’ ve cut
all the way to the center of the sun
I see
The fields flame with it, endless, blue
as cobra poison. It has entered our blood
and pulses up our veins
like night. There is no other color.
The planter’ s whip
splits open the flesh of our faces,
a blue liquid light trickles
through the fingers. Blue dyes the lungs
when we breathe. Only the obstinate eyes
Because the silence of the dead,
that blue expanse of sky about
to ashen here above my head,
is easily ignored, our tears
are blamed on flowers whitening limbs
of trees, the very air, with hymns
of summer pollen no one hears
except for women — old, devout.
The fallen Latte is the sign. It is from within the row of Latte that
we feel our strength. It is the severed capstone that gives us Their
message, "Ti monhayon I che'cho." We will not rest until the
Latte is whole.
— Cecilia C. T. Perez from "Signs of Being: A Chamoru
Spiritual Journey" (1997)
~
i haligi
a pillar
i tasa
a capstone
i tataotao
a body
~
his hands —
husk coconut —
cooks and
feeds [us] —
stories — this
raised house —
at quarry
outline forms
A wound is a blossom
but only to the living.
A May night, birdsong
before the first light pierces,
chirps out of blackness:
My daughter's angry at me
and her mother as I
was once angry at mine.
It's a way of crossing over.
I'm so tired now.
And my core's
all water, flowing
somewhere where the sea
can't find her. And neither
can I. How much longer
till I finally lose her? Where
is the first dawn wet blossom?
Who recalls how I touched
Model prisoner or not, I won't.
Silver lash, hound's tooth,
meager sinful town's crook.
I am nervous again. I could kill
if you let me. But tonight, I'll be still
under this palm. Zeroed out,
the tea my toilet muck.
Licorice and almond
twisted beneath the sink,
I'm lovely again. Come on
with my dying.
Today the globe's underside
isn't pink, but rather,
I look ahead toward what
has happened.
Savage Beauty
Like hell they'll fall for each other.
In Chicago, it is snowing softly
and a man has just done his wash for the week.
He steps into the twilight of early evening,
carrying a wrinkled shopping bag
full of neatly folded clothes,
and, for a moment, enjoys
the feel of warm laundry and crinkled paper,
flannellike against his gloveless hands.
There’ s a Rembrandt glow on his face,
a triangle of orange in the hollow of his cheek
