Series: Morning Porch Poems: Autumn 2014

Everywhere in the heart, country ravaged by famine, there are columns of dust where there used to be trees and promenades. Nothing leaps in the fountains but a suicide of bees. Somewhere its ruler is asleep, or does not know how to wake up. The elders consult the oracles, sacrificing their last few bones to produce instructions for breaking this curse. This is the only possible reason the heart accosts whoever comes near: it wants to know who is willing to travel beyond the ridges of the self, to stand in vigil thirty days and nights never once closing the eyes to sleep, until the bird of paradise comes to roost in the branches of a tree. Its mouth is a parasol that wants so dearly to be a song, in the same way sheets of hoarfrost on the ground want to turn into yards and yards of silk, their sheer gossamer slipping like water through the needle’s hundred eyes.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Go, my small
illuminated hope
the color of snow,
the color of light
beneath impossibly
flayed limbs
of trees.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Not the indifferent message
served inside the cracked
shell of thinned pastry dough,

but whatever sifts down
through the mesh of sleep
to wind up in the bowl

you are served for breakfast—
Not the spoon you stop to take
out of your mouth to consider

what worth it will hold, melted
in the furnace. Listen then,
and remember: how your

grandmother knocked on the door
of each pawnbroker’s house in town
to beg back the heirloom

with its inlaid heart of rubies
strung on a chain. One desperation
can lead so easily to another, then

another. And it’s true, we most desire
what brilliance wounds the deepest.
What we’ll give to stay inside

such golden, reckless beauty! That flickering
in the trees, every leaf a tongue that must
burn hard because winter is coming.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

So much that’s hidden away
in every room: drawers full,

boxes crammed, each years’
store of all the things

at which the heart at one time
pointed, saying Please,

I need, I want—
And I want to lighten

what weights the skiff,
what slows the quaver in

the sparrow’s song, hurling
itself above the corded wave.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

“That’s me in the picture. I’m the diversity.” ~ Morgan Parker

Everyone just loves
those beaches of white
sand, your skin the color

of ripe mangos flecked with
the sun’s old gold— And
everyone says Your people

have such admirable industry!
I’m always amazed at how much
you can do with so little!

By the way there are a few
misplaced commas in your
essay. Did you actually

write it all yourself?
Someday you must explain
to me how a writer from

your country can have
not one or two but four
national awards

to his name. Are you
all right, my co-workers ask
the day after Typhoon Haiyan,

lowered voices tiptoeing
around my cubicle. How are
your family? It must break

your heart. It does, it always
does, though I may not be
personally implicated.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The first warm day since autumn’s onset—
and sounds of soccer practice drift
across the street: the coach’s whistle,

his animated urging, the familiar
thunk of contact as the ball sails
toward its intended target

to a chorus of cheers. Behind glass
in the building next door, a line of girls,
their supple limbs a sheathed uniform

making a pale pink movement like a wave.
A woman waiting on the bench turns to ask,
And how is your daughter? In this as in all

things, the metronome ticks audibly:
measure against measure, unfaltering,
timed against the pulse that set it there.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Miserable when I do not spend,
miserable when I do—

Worried when I cannot give,
worried when I do—

Anxious when I give my word,
anxious when I can’t—

Surely there are
other countries tucked
between these promontories

of two, where the light need not
go dark when it is dark—

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Here is a fingernail slice of bread, a curl
of butter that none of our lips will touch—

a shot glass of soup, hot spoonful of meat,
and one clementine still glowing in its

bright orange skin. Here on one plate
we arrange morse code of small offerings,

make space in our hearts for an envelope
of silence. This is what we try to send

at the same time each year from this
house where we live on the forest floor,

today carpeted with what leaves have shed—
And every now and then, flashes of light

sear through the canopy, bright distractions
from tracking thread through the labyrinth.

*Atang

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.