The Offending Adam

A Moment of Rest

The Offending Adam — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:01:11 +0000

A good place to begin perusing our 2011 publications is with our recently announced Pushcart Prize nominees Jaswinder Bolina, Randall Horton, Amorak Huey, Lauren Ireland, Keetje Kuipers, and Johnathon Williams.

During the year, we published a number of special issues. Our First Anniversary Issue celebrated the beginning of our 2011 publication schedule. Word & Image investigated ekphrasis and the relationship verbal and visual representation. The Tuscaloosa Issue presented writing on Tuscaloosa in order to call attention to the vital need for aid and support after tornadoes devastated the city and the region. Four Contemporary Chamoru Poets, guest edited by Craig Santos Perez, presented the wide range of Chamoro experience, aesthetics, and cultural identity.

Some issues brought translations from the Chinese of Yang Zi, collaborative work by Sara Maclay and Holaday Mason, and essays on Tao Lin by Jennifer Moore and on memorability by Mark Irwin.

Spring brought with it the second installment in our Chapvelope series of publications. Selections from Chapvelope Two by Gillian Conoley and Joshua Marie Wilkinson were also published in the journal.

And then there were a number of contributions that delighted, surprised, and challenged us: Rebecca Lindenberg, MC Hyland, H.L. Hix, Mark Irwin, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Erin Martin, Shamala Gallagher, Charlotte Pence, Jeff Downey, Liam O’Brien, Frank Giampetro, and Saba Razvi.

This is, of course, just a haphazard overview of some of the work we were lucky enough to curate during the year. Many more delightful issues filled with content are always ready for new readers and for old readers to rediscover.

Chronophrenia

Seth Abramson — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:01:13 +0000

I.

Could it make it better if he were a ragman
on the Mississippi, if the people on shore
were as dark in their furnace-lit rookeries
as crows in theirs, so he never came ashore
to spit at them
and trade. Could it be better
in the late autumn of nineteen twenty-seven
than now, could salted meat in a pack
taste more like the Mississippi
when belligerent lives were lived there fully
and you knew there had been a dispute
more than three miles across the water
because you heard it
the moment a man collapsed into the button
of his canoe.
The things a ragman hears after dark
he moves on from or loses
everything. Could it end badly here—
yes, right then. Spine mishandled by a man
with weathered wrists and God knows
what history. Could it make it better
to know your father, to never have bedded
with a sister
gone now. Could you hear someone’s cry
on the Mississippi
over the dark, could you feel something
touching your nose,
making you squint into the black shores
left and right,
is that something somebody needs to do,
or should he be as quiet as a crow steeping
its nest. Could he do it, if he had to do it.
Could anyone. If the thing had been oiled
and kept in a warm, dry place for so long.

II.

Level and fire, level and fire, but always
level first
when you are speaking to that one
they said. They called me out just two days in
on a lighter to New Orleans,
but I never dealt from the bottom
like they said,
only I once showed my piece
to a lady. They didn’t like it much.
The bell end was wet
like a newborn left soaking
in a newsawn forest
by a granddad stuck in the bottle.
That’s one way to talk about it.
Or this—

One man produced a knife and then
the other
and then the other. I had a grey claw
from a crow fallen
on deck by the first mate’s.
You win, they said, now go.
Everyone is always in a way
with the voodoo,
said Captain throwing my stowage
into the waves.
All right, so he weren’t no captain,
but my father
I’d always followed that way.
He was going downriver
with me or no he said. That’s how I lost him,
or as good as that.
Or maybe he never really spoke to me
but over the commercials,
and only about the things he needed to know.

III.

At least someone has treated you
like a bear
and found out where you sleep
and come to that place
to lay down
on your broad back. At least
there was a weight you could carry
for a time, there was a long cave
with few roots
and a trickle of water in the back.
At least someone is trying
to get there with a pickaxe and six
days rations, with a headlamp
and eyes that will see for a time
congenially.
At least there was one Sunday
they lit a candle down in the valley
at the door of a home
you couldn’t enter
but at least it’s there. Could that be
something to remember
through December and past. At least
there are dreams
in which the right kind of bear
is living the right kind of life
for a bear,
and the right kind of dream is finding
you at last
while you starve gently in your sleep
like always.

IV.

Then there is a bump in the night,
then there is a bump in the day,
then there is a crash, I am needed,
then what can I do. What
can I do. Then a fighter jet growls
in the heavens, a loudspeaker pits
into a rumble across the water,
then there is water and more water
behind that. A woman—well. Then
there is a depth to things, I am in it,
then I am out
of all things, then it is said of me
that I am missing. But then. Then
there is a bump in the night,
then there is a bump in the day,
I tumble off an inimitable storm
and roll and roll downhill
down a hallway until my back blacks
on the handle of a door. And then
keys, then furniture, then utilities,
then a Persian, then some space
and some words and some silences
to regret. Then a crimson papazan.
A jetliner heads west, then another,
then another, then another,
then another, then another. I have
the capacity for west. North, south.
East I can’t go, when I am east
I am closer to it and I remember
a woman—well. Then no. Then yes.
Then I need someone to be here,
then someone needs me to be there.
Then go. Then come. Then please.

V.

It was hardest when I held it,
and if it burned my palm I imagined it
but I imagined it well. It is hardest
to see it in the flecks of morning
between the trees, I know it is perfect
then, the way I do scrub pines
when it is just their shape over me,
just promise, and the rain sloughed
through the fingers of leaves
has not run down my face, or nests
spilled out anything
speaking with more silver than I do.
A man holds just one of these and
just once,

I have met the man who broke his
under his heel
at a brothel, and he crept out mad
from the furnace of his life. Blood
increases hue, and when your face
is struck
or a man leaps forward with a will
onto your back, the tone of it is up
and stays that way. It is the heaviest,
its touch is the tombweight,
the skinbinding, the form of desire
not without object
but for an object sitting centimeters
from the heart, that will kill the heart
if it moves, when you understand
that it may move.
And then it moves. And everything
after that, remains.

VI.

At the end of travelling
I wear the road. Within my skin it is bad.
It’s worse without—
the particulates of being nowhere entirely.
It spans from Boston to winterlit Alaska
on a single lane with drops to the death
over both shoulders.
I walk on years, I touch with all the worst
minutes. I mean it takes its single traveler
to an outhouse on a black prairie, I mean
there’s one chicken left, one purblind pig,
and they can’t be killed
or not by me. On Sunday a doctor comes
and says not to worry, he will only open
along the edges. He finds them quick. He
has an uncertain nose, he learns in blood,
he reaches through blood and he’s satiated.
What I say to him slinks down his smock.
So the road is the crown
of your head, you are sent inside by sunlight
he says. That burns it too, you saying that
Doctor. But it’s true, at the end of travelling
I am the largest
silhouette, everything behind me I colon
into a list of what I’m made of. Up ahead
the doctor waits again in his red armchair.
I hold the light above him as he reads me.
I have left more behind
than is ahead, I’m close to it now. Not so,
he says, it’s the shoulder you hang from—
twelve hours from Boston and Alaska both.

VII.

Does my being here make it there,
does news travel
in bad weather. Does a sporting life
bring the animal down, does it dress
competition in casual clothes.
Does clothing fit. Does the fitting
make the fit fine,
does the rain cord on the window
like a noose or the black rope
that brings electricity
to a dark, dry place. Taos is a place
one goes, Searchlight is
and Trocadéro, an inimitable cell
called consciousness,
a room that is yesterday in which
a man is hurting an already hurt
woman. Does my being here, does
here being celled, make it there,
to a place someone hurt has gone
tripping to. Does the hunting end
with disorder in the brush
or silence on a pale-tile mantle in
Taos or Trocadéro. Do you pay
for each silence, and if so
why start. Can I admit this thing,
can I clothe myself
in something like it, is it time now.
Does the time come. Does it ever.

Brief, but Frank & Gin Don’t Mess with Me

Steven D. Schroeder — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:01:52 +0000

Brief, but Frank

Dear sir or madam. Dear devalued ex-candidate. Dear hunter without a

head. Dear lord of no brass rings ahead. Dear lord, period.

Thank you for your blah blah blah. After careful consideration,

boilerplate rejection. We wish you luck in your dummy text.

Papyrus is our official font and substance. Our motto and logo are both

No. Could you be our subordinate, separated at birth? No.

Are the gaps in your résumé and recollection due to booze? Likewise,

your letter had too many zeroes. By the numbers, you’re a blunder.

Forty isn’t an age, it’s a state of declined. Guessing your weight within

one pound is a hobby of mine. If you don’t matter, we don’t mind.

Thank you for not smoking. After careful consideration, we have decided

you sweat more than scotch on the rocks. We wish you would quit.

The taco truck came by at lunchtime. We bought a double-decker. You

got caught in a budget crunch with zesty queso sauce.

Yes, you’re a stellar elevator operator, but we worry you’re also a salary

escalator. Insert punchline about all the way to the top, full stop.

Thank you for your desperation. After careful consideration, we have no

regrets. We wish you all the best in your depression.

Sincerely, we covered our ass. Yours truly, though our pants are fired.

Your most humble and obedient servants, just kidding.

P.S. We had interest but, in the time you took to read this, lost it when

we rightsized our attention span. Up high, down low, too slow!

P.P.S. U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no alibi. Yo mama named you funny. Please

pick a more American nickname, like Dick. You’re welcome, Dick.

P.P.P.S. Try us again later but with commitment. Put our paper incentive

in a business envelope with rain and teardrop stains. No cops.

Gin Don’t Mess with Me

Beefeater confabulates better drivers. Over half
Of Americans believe the Soviet government

Invented vodka to subsidize potato bugs and juice
Baby bottles. They’re right. No matter what you hear,

The world’s largest prairie dog carries no plague fleas.
These knees forecast storms. Over half of Americans
Not of Mexican descent know the Mayan calendar

Portends Armageddon in four, plus or minus three.
In craps, the optimum time to bet the pass line is two,
The object to rig one new pair of shoes and sock it
Away for the house. Over half of Americans owe

More green than they mow and water their lawns.
Even sinners mustn’t mess with gin. Amen.

Note: The titles are borrowed from Jill Alexander Essbaum’s “Epistolary” and Harryette Mullen’s Muse & Drudge, respectively.

2011 Pushcart Prize Nominees

The Offending Adam — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 08:01:36 +0000

Jaswinder Bolina:: Aviary

Randall Horton:: The Weight of All Things

once there were particles, atoms clung
together & glue

there were noises from the bang

another universe begun, life
& the body formed, a shape

obtuse the head splendid. o human.
o being…

Amorak Huey:: A Death at Pictured Rocks

They arrested the husband, who said he turned his back
for only as long as a man’s urine takes to hiss steamslicing
                                           through concise spring air
                                                    to the ground
at his feet and when he turned back around to face the view
he saw only his wife’s sandal and immediately passed out.
Waking, he crawled to the edge of the cliff — saw
something white below — passed out again.
                                           This was his first story…

Lauren Ireland:: Sorry It’s So Small

Remember how you went away.        Now Nature hates you.
Well    I want to die    but just a little bit    every day.
I have learned    that everyone has some    great sadness.
I will let anyone    do anything    to me…

Keetje Kuipers:: Dolores Park

In the flattening California dusk,
women gather under palms with their bags

of bottles and cans. The grass is feathered
with the trash of the day, paper napkins

blowing across the legs of those who still
drown on a patchwork of blankets…

Johnathon Williams:: Anniversary Sonnet

We fought all night, all morning, so I treat
myself to breakfast down at Common Grounds,
a Fayetteville thing to do. A regular pounds
the dregs of a Bloody Mary, and the heat
at 10 is already too much. It’s all
too much: the water bill, my promises,
her steady, undefeatable love…

Onward Bounds Our Baffled Machine, So Cheerily Into The Sun & After the War I Dreamt of Nothing but the War & beginners (rm. 205) & Diagnosis

Sophie Klahr — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 08:01:31 +0000

Onward Bounds Our Baffled Machine, So Cheerily Into The Sun

Unimaginable: the dull florescence,
canned laughter, the hush.

His sleeping weight in my lap, the nurses
like feathers. I’ve now become

a baffled machine, and he an instrument

for measuring limits—
a crowbar, a burn.

Survey:

How many days of silence does it take
to know he’s drinking? How many bottles of Listerine
will be in X apartment when X door opens? Can you
bear to tie his shoes again; can you bear the greening
bruise over his eye; can you bear how many     to know
X apartment and does it take X days   to bear   how
his shoes   does it take   many bottles   does it take X door
X opens   does it take   of silence    can you bear the bruise
over    X    in again, when his eye   opens does it take
does it take drinking? to know   can you bear

Before I stopped drinking once I
made drunk paint of blood, dripped a little story &

I wish I’d saved the pictures now, they could’ve told us
where to go from here,

but love, the hungry dark
doesn’t care

After the War I Dreamt of Nothing but the War

When the nurse on the phone won’t tell me
where you are, I turn my body into wind,

     troubling the city of hospitals.
Slang of nurses, blood numbers, legalities,

the tic of a stuttered clockwork;
our disease has made me fluent in Emergency;

at the front desks they are not allowed
to say you are here, but they do not

say you are not here, they say If he was here
would you want to send back a note?

          and I write half a dozen notes
to a half dozen possible you’s, watching the nurse

for her smooth head’s small twitch that says,
He isn’t here. It’s Mercy, finally, that has you.

And because I am not family,
I am again a waiting room crowded with sound.

Something-something-terror
jangles across the TV, our old news on a new day.

Two children, strangers, discuss superhero du jour,
Iron Man.       Iron Man can he can fly, he has guns, he can turn
into whatever he needs. I could turn

into my life, that machinery, away from you.     I won’t,
or, the story goes, I can’t, I can only be here, waiting

six hours to see your real body tremor, your real breath move
into still-drunk apologies, the ways you’ll be different now.

beginners (rm. 205)

this is the living room. this is the moon. this is us kissing; that’s us in the mirror. that over there? is new jersey. these are the cherries you bought on 14th street. this too is falling. this is you holding the pits in your palm. this is my spit. this is the wilderness. this is the hole in the story.

this is a ship. this is a field. these are the flags in the wind on the pier. this is the pattern, the sun on our skin

to be distracted by having a body this busy the mind

this is us as material, by which I mean fabric, by which I mean substance, significant. how it feels to be written, unwritten; what it’s like to be written around.

this is us at the movies, us at the show, us in the film. this is the performance. these are our lines. this is exhaustion. this is the hudson. this is so many rollerblades so many tiny dogs. this is how many people there are in new york. this is your thumb at the ridge of my mouth. this is okay. this is enough.

Diagnosis

When we fight, your face becomes a doorway
through which I walk into a city of rain.
Nobody follows. I stand with my new blank
face at the bus stop, wanting to say
I’ll be better soon, I will be,
but impulse comes in the form of a bus
and I get on, forget where I wanted to go
what the stop is called, how to get off.

I’m trying not to lie.
I’d like to say something about God,
how I’ve become a vessel of change,
but I’m trying not to lie.
For some of us, there’s always a black dog
on the edge of things. I want
a neat source, one word, to buy me time,
as if the comfort of a word
was more than a whistle in the dark.

The word Bipolar tells me about penguins,
Eskimos, polar bears, days of whispering
through the phone, unable to get dressed,
Lois’ voice through the wires, saying Just reach out
and put on the closest shirt, the closest
skirt; two poles, “Opinions,
Attitudes & Natures,”
one certainty impossible to the other.

We fight until we’ve un-written
every promise into a blank page,
then lay on the rug, across
the room from each other,
heavy as victims.
Eventually, I suggest
ice cream. You agree.
It will solve nothing.
We move into the night.

Aviary & Sunday, Sunday & Oops Canary

Jaswinder Bolina — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:01:30 +0000

Aviary

do you remember the time we didn’t go to Topeka
we were ready to go with our sandwiches packed
and you had your harpoon and I had my headdress
but we didn’t go though we agreed it totally boffo
we could go to Topeka whenever we liked
but I said I’d rather live here than Topeka where
all they have is a crummy zoo and whoever
heard of Topeka anyway so we didn’t go
and spent the day instead alphabetizing
the pantry quipping how this had become going
to Topeka we composted our leftovers we purchased
hand sanitizer and accreted a Volvo a toolshed
some throw pillows we pressed 1 for more assistance
we pressed 2 to return to the main menu we assembled
in portraits accessorized the great room trimmed
our azaleas until all of these became going to Topeka
and we kidded everyday after how we were going
to Topeka and going to Topeka but we never did
see a prairie dog or a tornado and nobody ever heard
of any of us lying awake in hammocks instead
of going to Topeka or lit up by a television
in the pallid dusk of not going to Topeka
after returning home late in afternoons of not going
to Topeka or to Tallahassee or Sault Ste. Marie
so when I sit now on the stoop at night and watch
seedpods helicopter out of our tree onto the sidewalk
by porch light I wonder what the coral wants
what the arroyo knows I wonder what the desert
swallows and wonder too about the hills of Topeka
the cliffs and canyons of Topeka its auroras
and cyclones arcane canals and minarets
its manta rays in clear clear water supple rubber trees
its yeti and its swans breathing fire how when zephyrs
run like lucent fabric across the spires of Topeka
everybody there touches the flesh in the soft dimple
above the sternum and hums an anthem
in the language of Topeka which we can nearly hear
as if it’s barely past the yellow tollbooth
beyond that blunt and glaring truck stop
on the other side of a modest slope where its people
greet each other in the customary manner genial
and offering We are real and death is not
or maybe it’s Death is real and we are not
it depends I suppose on whichever is the fairer grace

Sunday, Sunday

I worried I’d be discovered exactly where you’d left me,
so I leapt up! and drove straightaway to the coastal
metropolis of Sunday in the desert province of Sunday
where everything was just getting started.
The buzzards hadn’t even been unwrapped nor the agaves
unfurled nor the nostalgia-making slant of shadows activated.
The haze along the shore infused with a noontime light
to cast the happenings in the matte finish of a studio print.
I felt young and new and the center of attention, and I wished
you could see me there driving my agape convertible
in sneakers and a gingham shirt, slim-fit indigo denim,
and I wasn’t smoking a cigarette, but I looked so quintessential
in my dinner jacket that I had the lithesome air of a debutante
drawing from the long white stem of a Pall Mall 100,
so the citizenry all said, Look how dapper he looks
driving the diaphanous skyway, look how handsome
he is in the gleaming cavalcade of traffic, how defiantly
he speeds alone in the carpool lane, how elegantly he collects
his many moving violations. You’d settled into a smart apartment
alone with your cat in the capital of the great state of Thursday
with its daunting mountains and bitterroots, the blackened
trunks of its forest in snow looking frigid as a barcode,
but I wanted to glut your inbox then with status updates.
I wanted to text you my brightening outlook in hopes
you’d forget all the troubles we’d run into in the gridded city
of Wednesday where the automatic windows of my rental car
wouldn’t roll up in a downpour and my debit card demagnetized
and I showed up so late so often and disheveled we missed
every night of the opera, but I hoped you might forgive all that
and fall in love anyway with the contemporary sense of me,
the Sunday, Sunday me now appearing, a bleached crane
strutting in shallow marsh water, an echo in reverse
gradual and deafening, the speck in your radiograph,
furious whitecap on your sudden horizon, dazzle
of a satellite fireballing out of some improbable orbit.

Oops Canary

Canary, why do you berate me with your idiot warble?

What truth is there in your story?
I know Pythagoras. I know Punnett squares.

I know whales were exiled from the air,

so their mournful, Byzantine songs resound now
over the drab Appalachia of ocean bottom.

Not me, canary.

I’m brown-skinned and slender,
of unremarkable height and blue-collar origin.

I was born in Chicago in 1978.

No brash plumage.
No quench-my-breath-undersea-for-hours.

I was afforded broad tutelage in the liberal arts and sciences,
but none of these is enough to temper the onslaught of winter.

I never really believed they would be,
but I wanted to say the onslaught of winter out loud.

When I told you that thing about whales, I was fibbing,
which is also a kind of song.

I only meant to impress you.

Canary, forgive me.
What more to sing is there than that?

Who Labored & Like Gauze & The Little Bird that Rattled

Sean Thomas Dougherty — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:01:54 +0000

Who Labored

When

you slept

the room smelled

of lilies

at
a wake,

like
Patsy Cline,

her later years,

that
heartache

kind that could
kill

what we learned

for the afterlife

I searched the house

calling

somehow you knew

departure

blooms

staining

my body

you
it is

you I can

still

breathe—

Like Gauze

But when I think of her, nothing has happened yet.
–Larry Levis

A theory of addicts.   Not a theory,

                                           but the way they bend

on the bench/more
                                 than a theory/

                                 a fiction/
friction, the spark
                      of the lighter
                                          against the edge of a cigarette.
                                          The deep inhale, pause,

then exhale.  A theory of.   Grace, dense
                                                                  and holy.  Grandeur

of the Opera Café in Budapest, the high gold ornamentation
where we drank coffee, ate Dobos pastry, talked to no one
                      but stared into the mirrors at strangers.

                      A strung out theory.
Strung out,
                      on the Green line at fourteen, a Red Socks cap,
a shamrock inked on my wrist,
                                                      the year you were born.

To disappear is to theory. To leave is a theory. Which is it?

Solitude of standing before a locked door.

Have I seen you, is a theory

different from I have seen you.   Seen you.  Shift like light
across a window.  Syllables, signs, supplications, on a night
along the docks when the snow becomes shapes casting medieval

shadows, singing.
                                Seen you.

To fade is a theory of what-is-almost-isn’t.
                                                                 The liquid
evaporating into apprehension
                                            of my speechless hands:

                                 (“To theory” attempts to predict what is
before it’s proved)— a cavernous splendor
                                                                 I leaned into:
In the Bartender’s cloth swiping clouds
                                                        was a theory of your face—

The Little Bird That Rattled

her air conditioner was trying to stay cool/got sucked in, and for a while

its dying/was filling the rooms/she slept in/how often this happens in ways

we never hear /the clatter never finds us/so we cannot at least/ hold

the tiny feathered /song in our palms/and grieve it gone/offer it a word/ or

two/ like a prayer/ wrap it in a paper towel/or bury it in the backyard/ dirt

we dig /and in this way/we honor what was lost/ it is not this/ too

often/the silent/ losings pass us/ unawares/perhaps we need to/when doing

nothing/ like the dishes/every now and then/for them/mutter/something—

The Conspirator & Anonymous & The Robber

Justin Runge — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:01:22 +0000

The Conspirator

A locomotive rose-
maled in mourning
heaves off steam.

It takes the last war
casualty through
the smoke remnants
like a somnolent
crosses the room.

And for a fortnight,
the barn arsonists
took to night travel.

Some warning fire
to perforate dry sky.
And only a parasol
is needed to hide.

Burlap makes crude
masks for the accused.

The only woman
blackens herself in
and out with a veil.

Anonymous

When the hedge maze
catches flame, masses
move in waves away.

A rose, lacerating
like the folio’s edge
slid across the skin,
clinging to clothing
like a lifted kitten,
iconizes the war.

Armies used to call
clouds with mouths
to topple the enemy.

Then came cannons.

Steel for weapons,
and timber to raise
combustible Londons.

Swordplay on stage
must be choreography,
must be red scarves
jetting from the chest.

The Robber

A mask reformats
his wince, his skin
tone approximated
in bloodless color,
lost body dredged,
wrong taxidermy.

The marathoner
has no choice,
tosses his body
from a window
into the street
like the duffel
of an adulterer.

The search party,
sudden as seep,
walks the glow
of dirt bike light
through the trees.

The infinite leaves.

They’re applauding.

Red

Anghet Hoppe-Cruz — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 07:01:26 +0000

Red

My favorite color is
Red.
The color
a pool of blood turns after
breathing in fresh air.
I saw this
Red
For the first time
As he held a knife to her neck.
Red
Bleeding life
The Color of life
I don’t think he meant to hurt her
As he held the knife to her neck.
“Baby girl, grab Daddy a towel”.
I did
“Here daddy.”
Red
Bleeding life
The Color of life
Soaking slowly
into a
Sun Shining
towel
Stained forever
Like me.
Red
Bleeding life
The Color of life
I don’t think they, our
Fathers
meant to really hurt they, our
Mothers.
Or us.
My favorite color is
still
Red
Bleeding Life
The Color of Life
What’s yours?

Nu i Che`lu-hu Palao`an & Sitting in History

Kisha Borja-Kicho`cho` — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 07:01:21 +0000

Nu i Che`lu-hu Palao`an

Like the two lovers,
the sisters tied their hair
and together
they jumped off
Puntan Dos Amantes
into the tåsi,
cleansing themselves
of all
the pain,
mistrust,
hurtful words,
awkward moments
of silence.

In this ocean,
the ocean of their Mother,
they immerse themselves
regaining strength,

Loving each other all over again.

Together
their hair still connected,
they rise quickly
through the water
like dolphins
and jump
into the air of their Mother.

Landing back in the ocean,
the sisters
hear
the såyan tåsi of their father:
“It’s time to go back.
Nånan Tåno` is calling for you.”

Their hair now separated,
the sisters swim back
to the land
of their Mother.

Mano`oppop
Gi i inai, mane`ekungok in fino`-ña as Nånan Tåno`.

Laying their bodies to the sand,
they listen to the words of Nånan Tåno`.

“Fanmanaguaiya.
Fana`asi`e`.
Yan hassuyi mo`nana,
na en fanafa`maolek.”

“Love each other.
Forgive each other.
And always remember,
to take care
of each other.”

Sitting in History

Do you know what it’s like to sit in a history class
           listening to your professor talk about his history
my history
your history
our history?

Do you know what it’s like to sit in a history class
           listening to your professor talk about what life was like
For your ancestors
           before the Spanish came
                      Chanting, Fishing
                      Latte, Lusong
                      Amot
           when the Spanish came
                      cross, bible
                      clothes, church
                      baptism
           after the Spanish…left (but never really did)

Do you know what it’s like to sit in a history class
           listening to your professor talk about one colonizer
                      after the other
           Countries that hung their flags
                      and told our people that we were under their control
                      Us not knowing that we would lose control of everything we knew
           Our people’s ways of living were forever altered
                      tainted by the colonizers’ (plural)
                      bibles, crosses, churches, SPAM, chocolate, McDonald’s, militarism

Do you know what it’s like to sit in a history class
           Not wanting to listen to your professor talk about
           the tragedies of your people
                      how the Spanish came
                                 and killed THEM
                      how the Japanese came
                                 and killed THEM
                      how the Americans came
                                 and killed US

I know what it’s like to sit in my history class
           listening to my professor talk about
           our people
           our past

I know what it’s like to sit in my history class
and feeling
on some days,
like I don’t want to be here

Listening

But on most days,
feeling
like
I am being reconnected
           to my ancestors
           to my past

I know what it’s like to sit in my history.

I’m sitting in it right now.