Eileen R. Tabios

After “She was the song of my dark hour,” a photograph by Paul Tañedo I woke up and I was old— It’s hard to judge if this new country was worth its costs— Fil and Eileen educated themselves— They blessed me with their happiness— Roy and Glen lost themselves to a car accident and something worse (that I will not reveal even for a poem)— When I see myself reflected in a mirror I turn away to hide both my eyes, all of my self— when half of your children are destroyed the half who flourish cannot compensate exactly as if a heart breaks exactly down the middle.

* Lime coats the thick sheaf of paper crossed by thin, parallel lines of a darker green. They approximate the rippling surface of a river pregnant with water and smoothly traveling towards an orb of sea salt. His pen is a black crow against a sunlit sky. Its ink is harsh, blotting paper, even with the neat economy of motion in how the ink is laid. For a moment, a golden spark glints from a cufflink struck by a sun ray. Meticulously, the ink travels from point to point, dipping, then rising, then dipping again until it is halted by one of the four walls of a square. The paper mottles. He lays the pen besides the projection of a likelihood as an ache begins between his shoulder blades. As he rolls his head in a circle, he considers the placement of a decimal point. Lastly, he considers the definition of a percentage to be the probability of error instead of the probability of an answer’s relevance. * It seems a secretary with large hair is shuffling until he notices that it is only a tight skirt hampering her thighs. He begins to feel the papers stacked on a crudenza curling their edges to protest being ignored. A lock of hair falls in front of his eyeballs and he notices a white feather. He immediately comprehends how long it has been since scissors tip-toed about his scalp. Bereft, he looks at his desk and is astonished at how still his fingers lie atop a yellow pad—he would have sworn his fear would have left his empty palms quaking at how time is consistently ending. * He looks up to be surprised at midnight “a done deal.” His hands seek release and he wipes them against the pin-striped wool encasing his thighs. A woman with a blurred face atop a blue silk shirt pops her head through the door. He knows she is speaking but his gaze cannot locate the source of the buzzing. He feels a fleeting thought of inebriated bees, how they might blunder with pollen gratuitously. His gaze falls to the circle of diamonds on her left, blue-veined wrist. He takes a chance and replies, “Yes.” It is sufficient to make her go away so that all that remains across his threshold is the shadow of a door. He feels he must complete the job by shutting a door but he is so tired. * Was I ever a boy? he asks himself as he watches the Chairman hold hands with his tall wife. The wife smiles but it is clear she is dangling her legs over a pedestal. When he reaches them for an obligatory greeting, he realizes (without being surprised at the certainty of this thought) that she smells expensive. He hears her emerald earrings tinkle like wind chimes. His breath is the breeze against her pale, seamless skin. She smiles at him and he feels even smaller. His breath is the flutter of a Trochilidae’s wings. When he next turns to the Chairman, he is buffeted by the Chairman’s smug grin. * He tattoos his fingerprints on the most random of surfaces. It happens that way each morning when he must read six newspapers beside The Wall Street Journal. One is in Japanese. Another in German. He cannot recall the last time he was lucid. He cuts himself shaving whenever the mirror reminds him that his eyes are covered by red cracks. They remind him of bigger faultlines just waiting to widen. He knows he will fold into himself during the fall. He feels that avoidance should be under his control. But it is not happening and he is often immobilized by this failure. * I should fall in love, he thinks, as he reads a worn newspaper clipping. It has traveled throughout the firm and reached him at last. He flinches at the leers clinging to the message. His fingers feel wet though the clipping is dry. The clipping is about Alan “Swift” Thiessen, the man who once sat in an office down the hall. Once, Swift was a tight muscle tightly sheathed in Italian suits with double-breasted blazers, a sartorial sun amidst the human commodities forging together a partnership. It was an eccentricity allowed by Swift’s ability to bleed rain from desiccated clients. Once, Swift also played squash every day. Now, Swift is clad in rough cotton and measures each passing moment in a jail, staring at rust and bricks. The newspaper reports how Swift went too far with a young, blonde boy sheathed in leather with metal studs. Still, The Investment Banker suggests to himself that he fall in love. Despite Swift’s ignominious end, he feels that Swift still bested him by having felt certain compulsions about which he can only remain curious. * At 4 a.m. he is not displeased to be alone walking the streets. At 4 a.m., he feels that the hour offers a certain excuse for his loneliness. Now, he is walking in the aftermath of an unseasonal rain so that the light is clean and the pavement shines from the wash of water. The tall buildings conspire to maintain sufficient lights to surround him like Christmas. He notices a white flower in a bud vase by a window he passes. It is unexpected but pleasing and he pauses to think,Hello! He knows he is imagining things but he senses the flower open its petals a tad wider. His nostrils flare at the inexplicable perfume of jasmine. He looks forward to winter when snow will cover the city. Even in a blizzard, the snow is constant. They never fail to cling softly to him as he walks in their midst. He feels,It is such a loving feeling.

HOMONCULUS: n., pl. –li 2. a fully formed, miniature human body believed, according to some medical theories of the 16th and 17th centuries, to be contained in the spermatozoon — The Random House Dictionary of the English Language The political contributions of whatever he creates are coincidental and, in any event, irrelevant. The musician may not be relying on mathematical acoustics in his calculations. He may be performing for auditoriums; thus, his physical realities change as he travels. Music seems inevitable. Every question entails some notion of what is being asked. The motley nature is not alien. Certain sounds guide the vulgar mind to notions not anticipated by those creating the sounds. A bartender concocts an Absolut Citroen gimlet, ice-cold but no ice, with one hand; “with the other hand he gathers up gonorrhea.” Most of what is imparted is not verbal. Certain philosophers must be translated before their audiences can respond. The mind is made visible through unconscious functions. The academic is always searching for the plumber. He is faithful to innocence. Order is space and space is order. Order is space and space is order. After being disaffected with Impressionism, Renoir felt he had to learn to draw and paint all over again. In Germany, an aesthetic movement became political and was forced to renounce art without realizing a decision had been made. A philosopher did not realize that the man who expelled poetry from well-ordered republics used to tremble at the thought of doing so, thereby creating through that very act a sublime poetry.

“I do not know English” —from “I Do Not” by Michael Palmer “Marunong akong mag-ingles” (I do know English) —any 21st-century Filipino poet I do know English. I do know English for I have something to say about this latest peace stirring between a crack that’s split a sidewalk traversing a dusty border melting at noon beneath an impassive sun. I do know English and, therefore, when hungry, can ask for more than minimum wage, pointing repeatedly at my mouth and yours. Such a gesture can only mean what it means: I do not want to remain hungry and I am looking at your mouth. I do know English and still will not ask permission. I shall call you “Master” with a lack of irony; lift my cotton blouse; cup my breasts to offer them to your eyes, your lips, your tongue; keen at the moon hiding at 11 a.m. to surface left tendon on my neck. For your teeth. And so on. No need to decipher your response—and if you wish, go ahead: spank me. I do know English. Therefore I can explain this painting of a fractured grid as the persistent flux of our “selves” as time unfolds. There is a way to speak of our past or hopes for the future, the hot-air balloon woven from a rainbow’s fragments now floating over St. Helena; your glasses I nearly broke when, afterwards, you flung me to the floor as violence is extreme and we demand the extreme from each other; your three moans in a San Francisco hallway after I fell to my knees; your silence in New York as I knocked on your door. There is a way to articulate your silence—a limousine running over a child on the streets of Manila and Shanghai. And Dubai. There is a way to joke about full-haired actors running for President and the birth of a new American portrait: “Tight as a Florida election.” I do know English and so cannot comprehend why you write me no letters even as you unfailingly read mine. Those where I write of the existence of a parallel universe to create a haven when your silence persists in this world I was forced to inherit. Which does not mean I cannot differentiate between a reflection and a shadow, a threnody and a hiccup, the untrimmed bougainvillea bush mimicking a fire and the lawn lit by a burning cross. I can prove Love exists by measuring increased blood flow to the brain’s anterior cingulated cortex, the middle insula, the putamen and the caudate nucleus. Nor is “putamen” a pasta unless I confirm to you that my weak eyesight misread “puttanesca” as the crimson moon began to rise, paling as it ascends for fate often exacts a price. I can see an almond eye peer behind the fracture on a screen and know it is not you from the wafting scent of crushed encomiums. I can remind you of the rose petals I mailed to you after releasing them from the padded cell between my thighs. I slipped the petals inside a cream envelope embossed in gold with the seal of a midtown Manhattan hotel whose façade resembles a seven-layered wedding cake. Which we shall share only through the happiness of others. Which does not cancel Hope. I can recite all of your poems as I memorized them through concept as well as sound. I speak of a country disappearing and the impossibility of its replacement except within the tobacco-scented clench of your embrace. I can tell you I am weary of games, though they continue. Manila’s streets are suffused with protesters clamoring for an adulterer’s impeachment. Their t-shirts are white to symbolize their demand for “purity.” Space contains all forms, which means it lack geometry. My lucid tongue has tasted the dust from monuments crumbling simply because seasons change. Because I do know English, I have been variously called Miss Slanted Vagina, The Mail Order Bride, The One With The Shoe Fetish, The Squat Brunette Who Wears A Plaid Blazer Over A Polka-Dot Blouse, The Maid. When I hear someone declare war while observing a yacht race in San Diego, I understand how “currency” becomes “debased.” They have named it The Tension Between The Popular Vote And The Electoral College. I do know English.

I consider the woman’s choice in liberating a red dress with pale-green sandals. My penury depresses me into a staring contest with a melting ice cube. A friend excited my husband with an invitation to pilot a boat with powerful thrusters. My gift of chocolate in pink cellophane failed to make the blonde smile. Consequently, I remind the party-goers that Trans World Airlines painted a new night with nebulae. I could be happy in Alphabet City, buildings crumbling around my notepad. I could be happy sipping iced tea while admiring the seamless face of a pool. I could be happy gurgling back at an infant dribbling green saliva down his chin. I could be happy downing Absolut gimlets (ice-cold, no ice) in a neighborhood bar with pool players providing the music, or a hotel whose walls are laminated with mahogany and where tuxedos prevail. I could be happy with your hand on my waist as you try to identify the scent hollowing my throat. An entire landscape in Antarctica disappears, evaporates until salt becomes the only debris. There are keys to everything, even handcuffs. You could have been happy, too.