Punisher
Duterte was perfectly justified
in doing whatever it was he did
said a person I loved
over coffee. At least I’m good
at nodding. Fishermen were paid
to take the roles of morticians.
Instead of shovels, a line
and hook. There’s a bay into Manila
that every president jones
to throw my body in.
After the second withdrawal
-induced seizure
in a month I’ll whip clean
this play-kitchen
of neurons, turn each synapse
unkillable.
If survival is the plume after
power’s volcanic spring:
ashes, ashes. Landing to cool—
I wait like a shrike
to bathe in a safe dust.
Held my longing to shirk
the mind’s Manila Bay
of faces. Sparrow
of harm, I once forgave myself
for thinking.
No one on earth is a stranger.
***
Book of Job
First law in violence
is that everything must part.
See also: third law in mercy.
Job’s sole relief was a shard
to part skin, and thus part from
his wasteland of grief. Faith too
hacked away at the wilderness
of me, ‘til I: a dark clearing
through which God’s headlight
cleaved. What crowd, what sea
could withstand the sharp
of a red cartwheeling star?
Then reconcile that awful
spine with blonde immaculate
Spring? Nothing left to grow
but bodies towards shapes
of consolation. Nothing left
to fold but the body
into a hurt gesture that waits.
Job is a waiting room
in Vancouver filling with Pietàs.
Gising na. God’s field
is gone. There is someone
in front of you in pain.
***
Virgin Mary Cast as Harlow’s Surrogate
Palms upturned like a madonna.
I’ve nine days notice to pen
a eulogy. My muse: a name
turned empty signifier, whose brief
liberty I must soon pollute
with context. Sometimes I envy
Mary whose hands collect meaning
without a will, two fair dollhouse cups
forgotten in the hail. Where has my forlorn
angel gone? Will no one come
inform me now of when to next expect
this grief? As a girl I was
lamp-bright and alone, brought up
by the things I had done
to myself—learned how to feed
on hurting milk, want for love
like a bed I had to make
do without. Pain makes a good ruse
for a mother, said the monkey, starved
but soothed by clean terry cloth. Nothing
once but a sheet between my back
and a hard floor, but any spur
found strewn in me can rock me back
to sleep. Prowling for words
like stoked coal in the dark, I splay out
an arm, harness what’s precious
by what burns me. All night my mind
is the sound of hurled china. My longing
verses latch to heaven’s ankle
like a sprain. Here I am with cured meats
and halved figs on a tray and no one
knocks upon my door to leave me
unafraid.
