Excerpts
Consume
La poesía es como el pan, de todosRoque Dalton What Satsuma mandarins for Santo Niño, for my father’s sepia portrait and Our Lady of Grace, what altar’s dinuguan and steaming brown rice, rice rotting for vermin, cockroach crony sycophants to sate themselves, TV What bone broth elixir in Mason jars, what Whole Foods 100% raw organic …
Sunday: A Travelogue
The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish. – Terence McKenna Sunday morning. Late to wake, again. Again in a panic. Again, I startle to find a full-grown man …
Drawing a Breath
I It starts and ends with a breath. The shock of air on a newborn’s cheek, the cold kiss of it. This is what beckons a first breath. It isn’t born of need, not a hunger for air nor scarcity that compels us to fill our lungs for the first time. Rather, drawing a breath …
Vegetarian
Ah Hui prides herself on keeping up with the times. It is because of keeping up with the times that she is able to research the most effective ways of inducing anaphylaxis from the comfort of her own bedroom. Wikipedia confirms that this allergic reaction can be triggered by many foods, including wheat, seafood, milk, …
Brink
I work small bones from the back of my mouthto my front teeth, pluck and drop themin a pile on a plastic plate. How easy it could be to golike this: cross-legged on the kitchen stool,mackerel flash-fried only a moment ago,an untongued bone fixed and final in my throat. After shattering a bottle of Shalimar …
The Bee’s Gospel
I enter a household wherein a woman uses stamps with blooms:zinnias, aster, primrose. She adorns envelopes,remembers her mother’s destroyed marigolds,and grieves for them again. At night a man puts his palm on her temple,then her crown, unfolding meadows,and every fruit and root.I sit on the headboard and wait for permission to enter.It is an expanding …
The Pepper King Returns
He listens to the tock of two clocks—neither are synched. The Pepper King does not know how to walk on ice:his boots slide with every fourth step or so. He is used to fine sand and root sledge,full of rock salt and shell piece. The soles of his feet are as thick as stale ends …
Dwelling
Look I have set my house on fire! – Kabir for Kimiko Hahn I used to live in the Bronx. One night I covered my manuscript in a woolen shawl and carried it to the incinerator. I opened the metal bin, shoved it in. The shawl had flowers and bird beaks embroidered on theborder. …
Reviewing the Troops in the Ruins
Usually no one famous shows upin my dreams, but this time President Bushappears, his blue eyes surprising.We are walking through a stone archinto a rally where he isunwelcome. Ugly murmurs.‘‘They don’t get it,’’ he turns to me,‘‘all the hard work we do.’’ To cheer him up I tell a jokeabout my dog dragging inparts of …