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.
Lamps have begun to light as evening,
alluvial, fills every crevice in the courtyard,
fills Devon House, alone with its marble columns,
its verandas and esplanades empty,
the plantation gone, and the fields,
the courtyard a tourist attraction now:
glass ashtrays etched with boys
too large to be clambering coconut trees,
Ignoring the local reliquiae —
neoclassical arches in ruin,
courtyards, their fountains toppled,
prados flourishing in prickle-weed, esplanades
no longer level enough to collect rainwater,
much less respect for the Imperio de España
tarnished by an islander’ s mock-British accent —
two fisherman returned at sundown.
Antiquaries themselves, these fishermen
schooled in the currents, the tide,
the tunneled limestone of the coral reefs,
preferred the graceful curves of the £.
Beyond the strings of water
clinging to the windowpane,
there were no cranes, just rain,
a sky blurred by wet glass,
a pond corrugated by raindrops,
and, inside, the smell of naphthalene bars,
a Victrola with a broken arm,
a spotty daguerreotype, a dusty crinoline —
O mildewed, seersucker suits
draped over vacant chairs.
~
[our] nightmare : no
birdsong —
the jungle was riven emptied
of [i sihek] bright blue green turquoise red gold
feathers — everywhere : brown
tree snakes avian
silence —
the snakes entered
without words when [we] saw them it was too late —
they were at [our] doors sliding along
the passages of [i sihek]
empire — then
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
