Via Negativa

You ask if this    hurt is permanent 
   if recurrence         is the only language
allowed us       in our passage   
    Like you    I think certain    days feel 
finished before they even        begin
    while      others unfold more slowly 
I wanted to say    even the fields
    that look raked and empty     hold on
to something         Roots    stones   a memory
   of water glimpsed as a drying    puddle   
The body remembers how      to keep going 
    Day shift    to night shift while
the mind finds the cruise    control settings
    I want to say          it won't always 
be like this   but we know the difference       
    between now      and tomorrow  the day
after and the day      after    How life    
    is a management of moments   even those
that bear  down as the eye     of a storm

A hill station is a colonial construct.

A hill station means rest and recreation, which are also colonial concepts.

The hill station could only come into existence when the notion of indigenous land ownership was rendered invalid.

A hill station is a vision of utopia breaking through the tropical heat and swarms of mosquitoes.

A hill is smaller than a mountain but larger than an ant hill.

Station has a kind of military ring; or it can mean signpost, which can also mean the place where someone is tied or whipped like an animal.

A hill station is a dream of living close to the clouds.

Clouds are formations of precipitate, meaning they have formed by accumulation and are only waiting for an inciting instance to release their weight.

In the hill station, landscape is mapped by functions not native to the land.

What a surprise to discover underneath the hill station, stores of silver and copper and gold.

   

is what they call artists who didn't go
to art school or take a single formal
art lesson in their lives. And yet
visions in their minds took shape
in clay or burst open with oils 
on canvas. Grandma Moses pieced 
her quilt-square landscapes, Van Gogh 
his bending wheat fields and vibrant 
yellow-green interiors. Fingers   
listened to every shape and shadow 
in the world. A tarnished teakettle 
on a windowsill is no accessory— only 
part of the equipment of daily life. 
Tea sets with missing cups. Mismatched
plates, silverware from yard sales;
armchairs covered with oily antimacassars
pressed to stiffness from the light 
of countless afternoons. Isn't this how 
you've always learned— figuring it out 
one trial at a time, as if from memory 
before it becomes memory? The lesson:
you prepare for joy the way you prepare 
for sorrow. How to stand without flinching
as orchids and velvet moths circle your head
and a black monkey coils a necklace of thorns 
around your neck, from which a dead hummingbird
with wings outspread now dangles like a pendant.   

~ after "Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and 
Hummingbird," Frida Kahlo (1940)

My beginning poetry class is unsure
about tercets and triplets. They're both 
stanzas with three lines. The difference 

is that all three lines of a triplet rhyme. 
I ask, Who has triplets in their family? 
The girl who always sits front, center, 

raises her hand; she's one of a set 
of triplets. She looks slightly confused 
when I ask, Which one of you is here? 

~ for Marianne


Will it be saag paneer, warmly  
green with spice, or pork belly
glossy under bar lights; that pupu
platter at Alkaline where cocktails
are cute and the sake is tinged 
with the smile of tropical fruit?
It's noon and we've changed 
our minds half a dozen times 
but there's no need to apologize
or forgive the wild swings of desire.
After all, isn't this our practice?
Tasting, arranging, revising, 
paring away then calling out Wait, 
bring back the menu? We want it all,

including a world wide enough
for our hungers. We want the longaniza 
and egg rice bowl, but miss the tart
bite of atsara that should be on the side,
and so we'll ask politely for vinegar and
garlic. There are some people who fold
at Take it or leave it, as if the self  
is an exact system. But we know this is it  
each time. There's no rehearsal, no understudy 
waiting in the wings. So we come as we are, 
with all our mess and improvising, bearing 
everything we carry to the table. Lint and loose 
change in our pockets, maybe not even quite  
enough to feed the meter, but right now it's OK.