Eileen R. Tabios
From
“The Diasporic Engkanto’s Diary”
Chant #1,000,013
Surely you suspected my
intimacy
with men who,
faced with moonlight,
pull down hat brims or woolen caps?
Sssshhhhh, I can hear your eyes
before you become once more
an etched seam. A blank line
___________________________________
for me to fill in the narrative
I desire. I desire you
whispering—
your lips
nibbling each letter
to concede with a gaze turned
away—to live is to collaborate.
Your face is now a blank
screen. You
are both
intimate and distant
like incense or lovers behind a thin motel
wall or a priest behind a latticed screen.
But you professed to be moved
when
I wept. You
invited me to take
off my shoes, loosen the top buttons
of my blouse, unpin my hair combs,
though also pretending you
have never
been the role
you now refuse: Home.
Chant #1,000,066
“We’ve never met. But I love
your poems so much I swear
I’d recognize you if we passed
within 10,000 feet of each other
in a city of skyscrapers atop
skyscrapers
bulging with
10 gazillion inhabitants.”
Uh. Okay. Messages like this
are my due. But I keep forgetting
whether you slit wrists to
write love
letters or I
intercepted a mortal’s life.
A bee buzzes by the plump
lemon
slice failing to
sweeten water, or its ice.
I am reminded of a hay(na)ku buckling
under the title of “Useless Wisdom”:
Only stars outnumber
the buzzing
mosquitoes.
