I see you
as I study my homework,
wanting to impress you
with my grades
I see you when I'm sad,
as a reminder of all
that I do have
and what I do not;
you make me admit,
in spite of my stubbornness,
I am more
than I think I am
my brain has been the enemy
and my body has been
the most vile essence I know
for I have bruised it
too many times
that I could never
deem it as beautiful,
but you show me
I am not represented to you,
as I am to myself.

we each bought
a burrito from
that same van
i would visit back
when i lived there
two pork burritos
one with added
sweet potato
brazenly requested
the other simply
the expected guac
my overconfident request
should have cost more
than I was charged
but the man serving
could not bring himself
to demand the full cost
for "just" a burrito
we sat and ate
on the bank of the river
that i used to
think of as mine
we bit
we chewed
we swallowed
catching up
as napkin-less
salsa-dripping hands
were licked clean
and wiped dry
across the thighs of
already marred jeans

To the childhood unforgotten--

Take me back again
To the games of siato, tumba-lata,  and tagu-taguan
with playmates whose faces I long to remember.

Take me back again
To the carabao rides on the muddy ground
The smell of the rain on the rice paddy and the laughs of my cousins as we tumbled down.

Take me back again
To the dining table lit by a kerosene lamp as we feasted on May's salted fish and mamok
With the cold, fresh water from the earthen jar
and the coconut and pili conserva in banana leaves.

Take me back again
To  May's lullabies with the crickets and the river's song in the background
To Pay's playing of the old guitar at siesta
and the passionate storytelling at night.

(c) Glenn Sentes
05.20.23

in the sky behind my little blue house,
tonight,
i see the brightest moon i have ever seen
and its light illuminates the peeling paint
and the broken window
and the mud
and i used to see blemishes, defects
new lines on the to-do list
and now i see home, home with you
the way we like it—
full of love and food and games—
wipe the mud off your shoes when you enter
and stay a while

it's four pm sunday afternoon
and in an unforeseen
turn of events
i'm awake

guess i've slept so long
i couldn't nap away
one more
afternoon

remembering how on friday
waiting at the bus stop
a library employee
walked up to me and said

"would you
like a poem?"
and handed me
a note card

and on it was printed
a poem
and a reminder that
april was national poetry month

it reminded me
what i've known for far too long

that there are words inside me
clawing tooth and nail

trying to get out
and i have to let them

so today it's
sunday afternoon
and i'm thinking about how
sunday afternooons
aren't what
they used to be

they started out in
the backseat of a
blue dodge van
crammed between my brothers
npr on the radio
i hated car talk
but loved to hear the way
my dad laughed at what
couldn’t possibly be jokes
not since it wasn’t funny

but after car talk came
prairie home companion
garrison keillor's gravel
serenade of life in
lake woebegone
static bluegrass
the drama
of guy noir
the hilarity of
tom keith and fred newman
playing ping pong with
airplanes dive bombing overhead

winding up around the lake
through the corn fields
until we got
to grandma’s house

afternoons turned into
evenings and i would fall
asleep in the backseat
on the way home
staring upside down out the
window at the incandescent
orange street lights
barely bright enough to cast more
light than the stars
treetops dissolving into the dark sky

i always thought it was
fascinating how it everything
looked different from that
angle in the dark

sunday afternoons turned into
dashing around
the church grounds
unattended
picking up deer bones in the
back lot and throwing them
into the pond
eventually removing screens
from windows and
climbing out onto the roof

we got older
turned into teenagers
lazy summer days
a memory so
soaked in sugary
pink lemonade mix
i can't help but scrape my teeth
remembering the taste of
citric acid and innocence

how we thought we were
so grown up
but i'd give anything to be
that kid again

i wish we’d gone
on more trips to the mall
before the shops were dead husks
a fallen ozymandias
to the promise of capitalism
when there were shoe stores
and book stores and a
radio shack and a gertrude hawk

we would spend ages in the
bath and body works
smelling and calculating
how much body spray
we had to buy between ourselves
to get the most out of our coupon
exchanging the bills and bottles
in the food court across from the sears
years and years
before it would become a post
apocalyptic vaccination center of
folding chairs and masked queues

before i lost them
to the split paths
adulthood takes
us all down

i wish i'd known what
i know now
that no matter how bad
it feels in my own head
it's never a death sentence
it will come and go

i wish i’d known
that none of it would last

sunday afternoons
the in-between
washing my hair
while my friends
went with my parents
to church

i don't go to church
don't think i ever will again
even though i wonder
if the sense of community would help

it's sunday afternoon
but it's not how sunday
afternoons used to be
with johnny cash on a loop
as i lost myself in
empty cardboard boxes
straight lines of
dusty wine bottles
shattered pints of
gin on gritty concrete

sunday morning
coming down
but it never felt like
coming down
it felt as close to peace
and quiet as i could get

sunday afternoons
turned to hazy piles of
navy duvet and
dr teals scented sheets
but i can’t do that anymore
i’ve wasted enough time
trying to sleep out
my own thoughts

so i'm trying to
let myself remember
let the words out
one afternoon at a time

something about this
sunday afternoon
feels like how
they used to be

an indigo country playlist
on the tv
all alone
with my herbal tea
the candle burning is
lilac and violet
i'm starting to think
i could find a way to heal

i'm not writing this poem
for it to be good
i'm writing it because if i don't
i might slip down with
the raindrops into the drainage grate
never to be seen again

i have to let my past
wrap itself into my future
or i'll lose the parts of
myself that brought me to here

there’s something about
having the window open
while it rains that tells me
it’s going to be all right
something about how the
library bells still ring
just off the hour
that reminds me

how time passes
how sunday afternoons
have changed
and i’m sure they
will change again soon
and what a relief that is

I saw your ghost on a train downtown -
it beckoned me to walk down memory lane once more

What a feverish recollection of unspoken dreams,
for familiarity of passing your stop created this melancholy haste -
the agony of persisting despite the lack of closure

your shadows still linger on the platform as I push forward,
ever reminding me of what could have been; nostalgia.

Somewhere out in another universe,
I'm 12 years old
and I'm sitting on my bed listening to something through
a hopelessly tangled white headphone string,
flipping through the dog-eared pages
of my favorite book while everyone is sleeping.

The sticky, syrupy air of summer floats through an open window
and nothing bad has happened to me,
no scalding words or hot fingers
etching their prints into my skin.

I haven't menstruated or fallen in love or  yet shrunk myself down
or any of the things that made me a woman.

I am warm in my white tank top
and the blue satin shorts with the printed clouds
wondering about trips to the beach
and sticker placements on my new notebook from Borders.

And I hope she's always able to stay like this,
that she never knows of the kinds of stains
that won't wash out of her white tank top.

And that every once in a while,
I might just catch a second of her laughing
from the room next door.

And in a fading dream
lost in a forest of nostalgia
Winds singing the days of old,
new to present, unlike when we were younger
Imagination it was; playing house in the yard,
imagining how we'd be as adults
Building our lives out of moulds of mud

...it's makes me laugh in tears,
of how much we've lost
from when we were young