Poetry

on days that gray, neither mist

nor shine, my bones ache

for banana leaves, cigarettes

and roasted pork belly.

 

she takes me by the hand, and

with a rich vibrato, hoists

me up by my once tanned skin,

now turned olive and dry.

 

odd words that echoed Mother’s

from the kitchen, coaxing

and comforting, the air thick with

broth from stews and rice.

 

I reach out, concrete and bricks

at my fingertips, but her

notes strike within me a yearning

for salty winds and straw.

 

my heart longingly sings along, to

an audience of a thousand

islands far away from my room;

my key lacks understanding.

 

it lacks the right inflections, forgets

to greet aunts and uncles

on the cheek. my key wants diners,

not adobo or sinigang, yet

 

I still sing with her, with every ounce

of sand I have left in my

bones, every seashell for a tooth,

to a home that,

once in a while,

sings to me.

as they were known to               steer pencils over paper or

ruffle and flip and twirl poker           chips all because they could

palm basketballs and             shoot them too and didn’t

you see them swipe candy from                  the checkout or thinly flick a

lighter than nothing                       really only a few afternoons of

practice until they figured out                     how to paradiddle and pick locks

or strike black keys here                           this is how you stick a jab

and fold pocket jacks but                    they’re stubborn and curling

their fingers wilted into                fists that can’t fish salmon

out of a strait they will age as                well as chain-link fences or

jazz that performs through eroded                 relics of surgeon fingertips

with a familiar melody                         one that once belonged

to someone who knew how to                         throw darts properly and didn’t

you hear them press the years                     together like steel guitar strings

please tell them on Sunday to try              their best and write again

My heart is a bright, round pomegranate

that’ll stain your fingers if cracked open.

These days, the world exists only in shades of red and orange.

Autumn’s chill sleeves my forearms in goose bumps.

The wind funnels in my ears, carrying with it

the smell of pumpkin intestine

and the taste of bittersweet chocolate.

Lately I’ve been feeling the way a moonbeam tastes,

light leaking through the cracks in my teeth:

like the spotlight that cast a yellow glow onto Joni Mitchell’s skin

at Wembley Stadium in 1974,

even though all of her songs were about being blue.

I play “A Case of You” on loop while walking to class;

it makes the sight of leaves falling off the trees

a little more bearable.

I legitimately think that the world is bleeding

because all I can think about right now are bears getting ready

for hibernation.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence:

if I haven’t raked the leaves off my lawn yet,

how am I supposed to tell the difference?

The electric color of someday

is splattered all over my bedroom walls.

I am as soft as a tsunami.

I take naps on clouds and go fishing in volcanoes.

Little Jules watches it all through telescope eyes –

and in a few years, those telescope eyes will become glasses,

and those glasses will become contact lenses

because she can’t stand the thought of having a tortoise shell-rimmed soul.

Objects in the mirror are never not oceans away.

L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

A pomegranate serenades me with lullabies from the kitchen counter.

I pull out the cutting board

and hack a knife through its abdomen,

expecting seeds; instead,

all of the songs of yesterday and tomorrow and forever

come spilling out of its gut.