The Body

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

Dark thing,
make a myth of yourself:

all women turn into lilacs,

all men grow sick of their errant scent.
You could learn

to build a window, to change flesh
into isinglass, nothing

but a brittle river, a love of bone.

You could snap like a branch — No,

this way, he says, and the fence
releases the forest,

and every blue insect finds an inch of skin.
He loves low voices, diffidence

on the invented trail,

the stones you fuck him on. Yes
to sweat’ s souvenir, yes to his fist

I woke. A tiny knot of skin on a silver table
Set in the birth-theater, blinking in the glare
Of electric lights and a strange arranged

Passel of faces: huge as gods in their council.
I was the actor who forgets his lines and enters
On stage suddenly wanting to say, I am.

I was almost all eye: they weighed me down,
Two lump-big brown-sugar bags in a face
Which did not yet know struggle, burden;

After our rendez-vous — this the last word he said,
Waving to me as the train pulled away from the station.
And so it seemed: harmless. Till evening brought
The first prick of fever, which soon trellised my veins;
At 2 AM came that knock on the city gates,
Little pig, little pig, let me come in....
Ha! ever a bold and warlike people, we didn’ t.

Bangkok

Caught in a slip of particulars,
say, between the dirt road
and the brand-new

Seven-Eleven, a bucket
of lotus, three shades of red
in the mudbank giving way to

Brad Pitt and Kevin Bacon are in a boxing ring in the middle of a football field. They are both wearing white boxer shorts, no gloves, and about to perform a dance routine. I am standing next to them, looking at Brad Pitt’ s hair flop down over his face. He smiles at me before the music starts. From everywhere, broken glass bottles hurl at their bodies, and they are splashed with gasoline. We are also in a dark alley lit by fire. The two are still standing, looking over at me, though I can’ t tell who is smiling.

Slowing down your body enough to feel.

Thought you were at a standstill
but you were only slowing down enough

to feel the pain. There are worse things

than running to catch the train, twisting
your ankle, the afternoon fucked.

Running to get to or away from?

the stranger who helps you up
wants to know, you who are so used to

anything scribbled on a prescription blank.

Just want the pain to go away, you say,
surprised to find yourself

reaching for someone else's hand.

Last night I found my face below
the water in my cupped hands.

The mask made of copper and bone
criss-crossing to make a smirk,

a false glamour, a plated glaze.
I unwound myself from the heavy

machinery of my body's burden.
The lute, the light, chime.

I'll get up and partner myself
with music, the purple moon

peeling itself like a plum.
Men stand in a circle and

they will ask and ask again.
I want to pick the thick bud,

to lose myself in the body's posture
bending in or away, to let

This is not really myth or secret.
This murmur in the mouth
of the mountain where the sound
of rain is born. This surging
past pilgrim town and village well.
This coin-thin vagina
and acid stain of bone.
This doctor with his rusty tools,
this street cleaner, this mother
laying down the bloody offerings
of birth. This is not the cry
of a beginning, or a river
buried in the bowels of the earth.
This is the sound of ten million girls
singing of a time in the universe
when they were born with tigers

A hundred and one butter lamps are offered to my uncle who
is no more.

Distraction proves fatal in death. A curtain of butter imprints
in air.

After the burning of bones, ashes are sent on pilgrimage. You are
dead, go into life, we pray. My uncle was a man given to giggles
in solemn moments.

Memory springs like crocuses in bloom. Self conscious and
precise.

Without blurring the cornea, details are resuscitated. Dried yak
meat between teeth. Semblance of what is.

Do not be distracted, Uncle who is no more.