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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. |
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