Skip to main content

Slept

The thorns had hands. The fire stood still.
It will take a hundred years

to piece together a hundred dreams.
A room of ashes was a room outspun.

Mother says the heart is a wheel

and it will turn as I turn. Quickly.
Nightly. I married the owl.

_______
I told her I could not walk,

the walls circled my steps. I told her
my flesh became stone and I did not

bleed blood, but sound.
What sound? I could not describe it;

it was voiceless

and low. But it was not.
Mostly I was not alone in my solitude.

My breath became the ghost of me

or the ghost of an old man
I'd long forgotten,
a midnight grandfather.

Pages of thoughts, they were not mine,
though my hand mastered

their language. I told her

I cannot howl winsomely
like vixens.
Like thieves. I wandered the forest,

fingering every loose twig,
but I was sleeping. My hand,

good as air, was sleeping.

_______
In my sleep, I wrote the field guide:
red-winged dream, tufted dream.

One was of salt,

one without hunger—a forest

of three-leaved trees.
I thought I knew everything.

My bed sat alone amongst the sassafras.
A fox, mid-pace and mid-bark, stopped

statue-like on a patch of moss.

I was watcher,

or maker. Yellow-bellied
dream, mourning dream.

Each thing I saw: a seed to a self.

Inside a girl stirred restless as rain.
I could not see her. I only grew.

Mother says when the basket's full,
it is time to come home.

_______
Asleep, I lived

in silence, but in light.

What if waking were a room
black as the mind? Hornbilled dream,

Steller's dream. And the body,

a darkness there is no memory of.


Jennifer Chang

The History of Anonymity
The University of Georgia Press

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Remembering Evelio Javier

Some of our heroes may have been more brilliant or achieved more greatly, but I find it hard to think of any who lived more purely and more single mindedly than Evelio... his commitment to democracy, to social justice and to a life among the poor in our land. Februay 11, 2009 in Panay Island, Philippines is Evelio B. Javier Day. It is the 22nd Anniversary of the assassination of Evelio Javier. It was a stunning and decisive event towards our eventual liberation from Martial Law later that February 1986. Many in our Ateneo community remember meeting Evelio’s body at the airport two days later, and the Mass and the long march from Baclaran to the Ateneo de Manila on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1986. We had a Mass at sunset in the field beside the Blue Eagle Gym and ended the Mass with the electrifying experience of hearing Fr. Jose A. Cruz, S.J. read for the first time in public the letter of the CBCP on the elections. Evelio B. Javier was born to Everardo Autajay Javier of Hamtic and ...

When I Met U

Some of the devices used in the story to separate the pair are actually dated and had been done by the mother of Leonor Rivera when she broke her daughter’s romance with Jose Rizal. But instead of intercepting letters, it is the cell phone STAR BYTES By Butch Francisco Updated February 12, 2009 12:00 AM In the story, Richard and KC get stranded on a deserted island for a night on their way to a wedding in Palawan. Even if there is initial dislike for each other in the beginning, they still end up having a romance (but, of course — this is a love story!). The trouble is — they are committed to other people: Richard to Iya Villania and KC to Alfred Vargas. From the start there is already a doubt in Richard’s heart about his love for Iya and so we see that their relationship is brittle. From KC’s end, it is easy to understand why she had mixed feelings for Alfred: He is controlling, cold and has no sense of humor. In other words, he is boring. Their proble...

SHOPPING for HOME GYM EQUIPMENT! (+70% Sneaker SALE at Toby's)