the people sauntering
around us are their own celestial bodies detached from the outside world
in their mind, inside their screens —they are far, far away.

we pass pedestrians on the street, towards
the same corner park, where we sit and chat, but we are light years from the other folks and from one another. and i wondering if i tilted my phone and aim it’s reflection into their eyes if they’d receive it, if the speed of light is really all it’s cracked up to be then how quickly can it reach them play my golden record of connection “hello, from this child of planet earth with oversized limbs”

La lenta sabiduría de la lengua
escurre con corriente fuerte y llena
un frasco entró
¿quien se entera? si cada lengua pide
ojos y cada par de ojos suena
en diferente lengua

¿y qué tal la sabiduría del corazón?
la que dicen que no tiene razón
¿cuantos frascos podrá ella llenar ?

Tectonic plates of memory crash
close to the filament of a blooming
rose that sits with its three sisters over
over the midnight flora, as I prepare
to rest my head over a pillow they collide

the stitchery of the past lifts off
and circles like Angeles the crown of my head
I follow the morning and
I peek into a 9:00 am mass to listen to prayers. I try to find my grandmother so I look at the same row she would sit in. In a different city, in a different church, in another bench but instinctively look at the third row on the right. There is an other women bowing like the others as the priest cues with his words. She is not my grandmother. They are not my grandmothers but they are someone else’s   If I had opened my eyes here
on a hilll in Haebangchon as did
my dear friend 15 years my senior
Then one of them might know my name
but they smile as if they do

The evening prepares to fully gulp
the sun, the car engines zoom contorting the sound scape and twisting gravel into their menacing rubber wheels

I have been well positioned by your love
picked up and delivered over my own fire’s hearth so close I was fanned
by your bellow into the firebox and that is why I am warm
my flames powerful and controlled
enough to set afire the thin veils of deceit
I practice cracking and melting fake plastic trees
I watch their flames burn dark. dark. Darkness leaves my hearth it no longer stays

there is nothing to chase
to fill you
so there is
only giving