Ever since I moved in with
an old friend from High School
and his girlfriend I've got
nonstop texts from my grandmother
asking if I'm okay, if I need any fresh
water from the well, and am I
getting a full night's rest. As much
as I'd like to say no, because it's the truth,
instead I say yes, because the truth
would hurl me back into
a place where personal space
doesn't exist. A couple of years before leaving,
I went to a friend's house down the street.
I had left my laptop open; it was still on
website I frequent on the loneliest of nights.
I remember the blood curling screams; the howling
for me to come back and explain why there
were guys doing questionable things to dead girls.
Telling my grandmother those girls were just
playing dead didn't wipe that scowl off her face;
it only made things worse. She canceled our
internet service provider and made me give
my laptop to my older cousin Nick.
It isn't so bad here. My roommates smoke ***,
play video games and most importantly don't
ask where I am going or what I'm doing
on the weekend. I like it. I could get used to it.
My phone vibrates almost every hour. But I'm
getting used to not answering every text. Sometimes
I feel guilty for imagining my grandmother dead;
sometimes I let the thought delve further into darkness
and imagine terrible things being done to her. It isn't
that I don't love her. I think I love her too much.
When I'm tossing like a fish out of water
in cold sweats; I wake up and lie there, breathing,
trying not to swallow my tongue; and like clockwork
the AC comes on and hums a little tune, as though it
were only meant for me. I mumble along until
I fall back asleep. I dream the same dream.
I'm small again. And I'm chasing a thousand
dragonflies through a nameless field
somewhere in the Midwest.

Anywhere, really.

got the truck stuck
wheels spinning
cloey (the goat) stares at me

i
no less than two hundred souls lie
        clustered along the shoreline
        lowland they call a town.
there where the hilltops look
        below, where salty waves
        in unending sequence
        lap the rocks.
the foam floating still is fading
        and the icy gloom of night is gone.
the tug-tug of the diesel engine
        interrupts the balmy silence
        of the sleeping town.
perchance,
        here is a variant
        (or is it?)
        on new island soil
        tread one another foot.

       ii
away now from the busy hum of
        factory, from the hurrying trucks,
        daredevil drivers, the unwelcomed
        whistle of the morning train,
        from the strained scream of the
        lumpia vendor, from the sophisticated
        melody of nightclub music, from the
        alms-begging cries in crowded sidewalks,
        from pretending graded glasses seeking
        sheep-skin, high-pressured ticket seller.
        away form the honk-honk of waiting
        limousines, the haste of presses
        accommodating headlines, the cackle
        of the radio announcer.
        it takes a sea to part the two,
                and many others more, yet the
                watery distance do mend the broken
                piece-part of the broken whole.

      iii
broken by the water barrier, part of
        the broken scheme – a stray mass
        the grown untamed.
blame it on the ills of war, a frenzied
        sickness, a cancer-growth.
        a callousness undisguised
the city’s pleasure is a farmlife’s
        leisure and these
        in different garbs exist.
not even mindful of the worms
        that eat up the human heart,
        like a rotting fruit.
with colored goggles
        the hue is blood-red and shady black.

  iv
o city of pain,
vineyard of desire
o burial ground
        where lay bedfellows
        they who came, stayed, gone,
where stumps and leafless trunks
        are bare to the sun,
        breathless and devoid.
while fingers are busy
        counting metallic coins.

  v
no, not a flood shall cleanse
        this wild and wanton fleshliness,
        nor upturn the barren farrows,
        not the rise of the tides
        nor the fury of the winds
        not even the whiplash of a strong hand.
the deluge in every clayey figure
        in the farm and furnace.
the going up beyond the worldly
        watermark of the passing tide
        that is man.
the man
        the self
                is the starting point
                from which the line
                        of the circle revolves.
                        and in our chambered brief hours
                                of aloneness, shall speak
                                a shrill deep-seated voice
                                to which we shall be all ears
                                        and shall tremble.