The Thumb
Peter Schneider
In a nanosecond David lost his thumb,
the one his mother painted
with pine pitch when he was four
to keep him from forever sucking it.
Unable to distinguish human flesh
the McCormick silo filler
sliced it off--
nail, bone, knuckle--
and blew it skyward
an ounce of humanity
in a thousand tons of silage.
Taken by surprise
David suppressed the truth.
Before the rush of blood
he held up the stump
saw the clean cut
grey bone marrow visible
and thrust it in his mouth
where the memory
of childhood security lay.
Then he swore,
tears rushing to his eyes, and ran
holding the stump with his good hand
blood oozing between his fingers.
Joe, a huge bulk of a man
and a constant neighbor,
jumped from his wagon
caught David like a child
held him to his chest
not intimidated by blood
or the tears of a grown man.
"The Thumb" by Peter Schneider, from Line Fence. (c) Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2006. Reposted from The Writers Almanac.
***
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Because November is the weird boy of months.
How Many Nights
Galway Kinnell
How many nights
have I lain in terror,
O Creator Spirit, maker of night and day,
only to walk out
the next morning over the frozen world,
hearing under the creaking snow
faint, peaceful breaths...
snake,
bear, earthworm, ant...
and above me
a wild crow crying 'yaw, yaw, yaw'
from a branch nothing cried from ever in my life.
***
Driving Nails
Gary L. Lark
I learned to walk stud walls
setting rafters when I was six.
I straightened nails for my father
to re-drive, piecing a home together
after work or on weekends.
We were called Okies by some
when we moved to the valley,
putting up our tar-papered shack.
Two years later a house was rising
to face them across the pasture.
The only plans were sketched
on a six inch pad, but all the corners
were true. The septic tank hole
was dug with pick and shovel.
Lumber carted home from the mill.
The only time help came
was when we poured the foundation.
Guys from the mill rode springing planks
to deliver tons of wet concrete by wheelbarrow,
tamped down with shovel handles.
My father beveled the molding,
drilled and set each piece of hardwood flooring,
not a nail would show. I crawled insulation
into tight places above the ceiling
and helped with rolled roofing.
Nobody mentioned our low rank
when my mother joined the garden club.
"How Many Nights" by Galway Kinnell, from Three Books. (c) Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
"Driving Nails" by Gary Lark, from Getting By. (c) Logan House, 2009.
Both reposted from The Writer's Almanac, without permission.
Galway Kinnell
How many nights
have I lain in terror,
O Creator Spirit, maker of night and day,
only to walk out
the next morning over the frozen world,
hearing under the creaking snow
faint, peaceful breaths...
snake,
bear, earthworm, ant...
and above me
a wild crow crying 'yaw, yaw, yaw'
from a branch nothing cried from ever in my life.
***
Driving Nails
Gary L. Lark
I learned to walk stud walls
setting rafters when I was six.
I straightened nails for my father
to re-drive, piecing a home together
after work or on weekends.
We were called Okies by some
when we moved to the valley,
putting up our tar-papered shack.
Two years later a house was rising
to face them across the pasture.
The only plans were sketched
on a six inch pad, but all the corners
were true. The septic tank hole
was dug with pick and shovel.
Lumber carted home from the mill.
The only time help came
was when we poured the foundation.
Guys from the mill rode springing planks
to deliver tons of wet concrete by wheelbarrow,
tamped down with shovel handles.
My father beveled the molding,
drilled and set each piece of hardwood flooring,
not a nail would show. I crawled insulation
into tight places above the ceiling
and helped with rolled roofing.
Nobody mentioned our low rank
when my mother joined the garden club.
"How Many Nights" by Galway Kinnell, from Three Books. (c) Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
"Driving Nails" by Gary Lark, from Getting By. (c) Logan House, 2009.
Both reposted from The Writer's Almanac, without permission.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Erasures
Erasures
Sharon Bryan
My best lover ever
is dead. And
the second best.
Nothing to do
with me, it was years
since I'd seen them.
Still, they took
something with them
no one else knows
about me, and if I
know it, I know
only half, like every
other line of a poem.
"Erasures" by Sharon Bryan, from Sharp Stars. (c) BOA Editions, 2009. From The Writer's Almanac.
Sharon Bryan
My best lover ever
is dead. And
the second best.
Nothing to do
with me, it was years
since I'd seen them.
Still, they took
something with them
no one else knows
about me, and if I
know it, I know
only half, like every
other line of a poem.
"Erasures" by Sharon Bryan, from Sharp Stars. (c) BOA Editions, 2009. From The Writer's Almanac.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Reflection is not always a mirroring.
Harvest
Louise Gluck
It's autumn in the market--
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They're beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oilcloth--
Inside, they're gone. Black, moldy--
you can't take a bite without anxiety.
Here and there, among the tainted ones, a fruit
still perfect, picked before decay set in.
Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants.
Pumpkins, a lot of pumpkins.
Gourds, ropes of dried chilies, braids of garlic.
The artisans weave dead flowers into wreaths;
they tie bits of colored yarn around dried lavender.
And people go on for a while buying these things
as though they thought the farmers would see to it
that things went back to normal:
the vines would go back to bearing new peas;
the first small lettuces, so fragile, so delicate, would begin
to poke out of the dirt.
Instead, it gets dark early.
And the rains get heavier; they carry
the weight of dead leaves.
At dusk, now, an atmosphere of threat, of foreboding.
And people feel this themselves; they give a name to the season,
harvest, to put a better face on these things.
The gourds are rotting on the ground, the sweet blue grapes are finished.
A few roots, maybe, but the ground's so hard the farmers think
it isn't worth the effort to dig them out. For what?
To stand in the marketplace under a thin umbrella, in the rain, in the cold,
no customers anymore?
And then the frost comes; there's no more question of harvest.
The snow begins; the pretense of life ends.
The earth is white now; the fields shine when the moon rises.
I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.
What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.
"Harvest" by Louise Gluck from A Village Life. (c) Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009. From The writer's Almanac.
Louise Gluck
It's autumn in the market--
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They're beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oilcloth--
Inside, they're gone. Black, moldy--
you can't take a bite without anxiety.
Here and there, among the tainted ones, a fruit
still perfect, picked before decay set in.
Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants.
Pumpkins, a lot of pumpkins.
Gourds, ropes of dried chilies, braids of garlic.
The artisans weave dead flowers into wreaths;
they tie bits of colored yarn around dried lavender.
And people go on for a while buying these things
as though they thought the farmers would see to it
that things went back to normal:
the vines would go back to bearing new peas;
the first small lettuces, so fragile, so delicate, would begin
to poke out of the dirt.
Instead, it gets dark early.
And the rains get heavier; they carry
the weight of dead leaves.
At dusk, now, an atmosphere of threat, of foreboding.
And people feel this themselves; they give a name to the season,
harvest, to put a better face on these things.
The gourds are rotting on the ground, the sweet blue grapes are finished.
A few roots, maybe, but the ground's so hard the farmers think
it isn't worth the effort to dig them out. For what?
To stand in the marketplace under a thin umbrella, in the rain, in the cold,
no customers anymore?
And then the frost comes; there's no more question of harvest.
The snow begins; the pretense of life ends.
The earth is white now; the fields shine when the moon rises.
I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.
What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.
"Harvest" by Louise Gluck from A Village Life. (c) Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009. From The writer's Almanac.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
For the sake of my hair, let me say this.
The radio on my cab going to Ortigas today was on DZXL 558, with one of the Tulfo brothers hosting. The topic of conversation was HB 5043, or the Reproductive Health Bill. His guests were Cong. Defensor, who is for the RH Bill, an archbishop and a representative from the Buhay Party-List, who were against it.
Here is what I remember of what they said:
Cong. Defensor only elaborated on the provisions of the bill, mainly government funding for population control programs, including contraceptives and prophylactics. He emphasized that the bill is still anti-abortion, despite its call for government-funded family planning methods.
The Archbishop (I didn't get his name, a very telling miss on my part) argued quite sensibly, I think, and "not as a Catholic," he said, for the risk of bloodying the hands of some unwitting user of a possibly abortive drug. Do we really want someone unknowingly committing the sin of abortion, he asked. Would we want such a burden on someone's shoulders?
The Buhay party-list rep echoed the point of the Archbishop, with less sense and wit.
These three were not simultaneous guests in the program, but were interviewed consecutively. After these phone-ins, Tulfo summarized the entire thing by saying that overpopulation is not a problem, because people are assets. See how our millions of OFWs save our economy with their remittances, he said. Look at China's population, he said, there's a whole lot more of them, and they're doing fine.
What is wrong with this picture? Wait, let me rephrase. Where do I start, with all that is wrong in this picture? And I am not even going to touch Tulfo's smirking remarks with a ten-foot pole.
So let me avoid tearing out my hair. This is my problem: Where is the woman's voice in all this?
Why were the guest all men? And with Tulfo leading the pack, sounding very smug and TNL, agreeing enthusiastically with his last two guests, while being lukewarm and not at all encouraging with the first, there was not a single female voice, nor a single statement for the female in that discussion.
Why this is important to me, is obvious, if you will simply dismiss me as a feminist. But consider my basic point, that the whole contraception issue should be a woman's decision. This is not a feminist statement, it is biological. If your reproductive system can't house a baby, then sorry, your inputs here are peripheral.
So again: Where is the woman's voice in all this?
This is what I am trying to say: The fact of pregnancy, and the question of abortion, is a female problem, by virtue of our biology. And if we choose to keep our reproductive organs, then we have to be given the right to decide what goes on, and what goes in there. Be it the consent to sex, the decision to avoid pregnancy, the fact of pregnancy, and the trial of letting it go. Sure, the last decision may be affected by what a guy has to say ("I'll marry you" more often than not standing for "I want the baby"), but it is the woman and her body who will go through the pregnancy--all nine months of it. Is it too much to ask that the decision be hers?
And for all the arguments and discussions and posters (See Notes below) on the RH Bill, has there been any on the basis of biology? And its lopsided possibilities, its general inevitability?
As an environmental science major, let me say that overpopulation is a problem. Put that with poverty, the inequitable distribution and access to wealth and resources, then you have the root of all our major environmental problems all over the world. Not to mention the general "history of inequity" of this country.
As someone who finished college--hell, high school even--let me say that education is a major factor in the decision-making that women go through before they consider sex and what they do about it and its consequences when the deed is done.
As someone who is not Catholic, let me say that I appreciate, and find beautiful, the collective act of looking after our souls.
But as a woman, let me say this: I am my body, too. Let me.
***
NOTES:
1. Click here for the full text of HB 5043. Here's another.
2. Oist, believe me, this is the most serious I've been tackling this issue. And I have to say, the most I've enjoyed is retelling the anti-RH Bill posters all over Iloilo City around December last year: No to HB 5043: No to abortion. Yes to life. No to free sex. (Yes to prostitution?)
3. Seriously, though, my point is not for or against the Bill. That's your decision.
4. What can I say? When the talk's of sex and the body, I get fired up.
5. "I am woman, hear me roar."
Here is what I remember of what they said:
Cong. Defensor only elaborated on the provisions of the bill, mainly government funding for population control programs, including contraceptives and prophylactics. He emphasized that the bill is still anti-abortion, despite its call for government-funded family planning methods.
The Archbishop (I didn't get his name, a very telling miss on my part) argued quite sensibly, I think, and "not as a Catholic," he said, for the risk of bloodying the hands of some unwitting user of a possibly abortive drug. Do we really want someone unknowingly committing the sin of abortion, he asked. Would we want such a burden on someone's shoulders?
The Buhay party-list rep echoed the point of the Archbishop, with less sense and wit.
These three were not simultaneous guests in the program, but were interviewed consecutively. After these phone-ins, Tulfo summarized the entire thing by saying that overpopulation is not a problem, because people are assets. See how our millions of OFWs save our economy with their remittances, he said. Look at China's population, he said, there's a whole lot more of them, and they're doing fine.
What is wrong with this picture? Wait, let me rephrase. Where do I start, with all that is wrong in this picture? And I am not even going to touch Tulfo's smirking remarks with a ten-foot pole.
So let me avoid tearing out my hair. This is my problem: Where is the woman's voice in all this?
Why were the guest all men? And with Tulfo leading the pack, sounding very smug and TNL, agreeing enthusiastically with his last two guests, while being lukewarm and not at all encouraging with the first, there was not a single female voice, nor a single statement for the female in that discussion.
Why this is important to me, is obvious, if you will simply dismiss me as a feminist. But consider my basic point, that the whole contraception issue should be a woman's decision. This is not a feminist statement, it is biological. If your reproductive system can't house a baby, then sorry, your inputs here are peripheral.
So again: Where is the woman's voice in all this?
This is what I am trying to say: The fact of pregnancy, and the question of abortion, is a female problem, by virtue of our biology. And if we choose to keep our reproductive organs, then we have to be given the right to decide what goes on, and what goes in there. Be it the consent to sex, the decision to avoid pregnancy, the fact of pregnancy, and the trial of letting it go. Sure, the last decision may be affected by what a guy has to say ("I'll marry you" more often than not standing for "I want the baby"), but it is the woman and her body who will go through the pregnancy--all nine months of it. Is it too much to ask that the decision be hers?
And for all the arguments and discussions and posters (See Notes below) on the RH Bill, has there been any on the basis of biology? And its lopsided possibilities, its general inevitability?
As an environmental science major, let me say that overpopulation is a problem. Put that with poverty, the inequitable distribution and access to wealth and resources, then you have the root of all our major environmental problems all over the world. Not to mention the general "history of inequity" of this country.
As someone who finished college--hell, high school even--let me say that education is a major factor in the decision-making that women go through before they consider sex and what they do about it and its consequences when the deed is done.
As someone who is not Catholic, let me say that I appreciate, and find beautiful, the collective act of looking after our souls.
But as a woman, let me say this: I am my body, too. Let me.
***
NOTES:
1. Click here for the full text of HB 5043. Here's another.
2. Oist, believe me, this is the most serious I've been tackling this issue. And I have to say, the most I've enjoyed is retelling the anti-RH Bill posters all over Iloilo City around December last year: No to HB 5043: No to abortion. Yes to life. No to free sex. (Yes to prostitution?)
3. Seriously, though, my point is not for or against the Bill. That's your decision.
4. What can I say? When the talk's of sex and the body, I get fired up.
5. "I am woman, hear me roar."
Monday, September 21, 2009
Games people play.
I. 20 Questions
1. Name the number. Number all the names.
2. Right or wrong?
3. Wrong, and write.
***
4. Boxers vs. briefs?
5. Briefer and briefer.
6. Briefed.
***
7. Let's play catch-up!
8. Catch up! The game began long ago.
9. Catch up? The game began long ago...
10. Catch, v.: To save?
11. Catch, n.: A trap.
***
11. Draw a straw.
12. Luck of the draw.
13. Thirteen.
***
14. And so it goes.
15. So how goes it?
16. ...
17. I drew the same blank, baby.
***
18. Neither here nor there.
19. Look elsewhere?
20. Time's up.
1. Name the number. Number all the names.
2. Right or wrong?
3. Wrong, and write.
***
4. Boxers vs. briefs?
5. Briefer and briefer.
6. Briefed.
***
7. Let's play catch-up!
8. Catch up! The game began long ago.
9. Catch up? The game began long ago...
10. Catch, v.: To save?
11. Catch, n.: A trap.
***
11. Draw a straw.
12. Luck of the draw.
13. Thirteen.
***
14. And so it goes.
15. So how goes it?
16. ...
17. I drew the same blank, baby.
***
18. Neither here nor there.
19. Look elsewhere?
20. Time's up.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The perfect is forgotten.
I never take afternoon naps, and I never sleep in the middle of a book.
Or I would have said that, before I did both at the same time, quite some time ago.
You had just left the house for work, and I picked up the book to pretend I didn't mind the alone. It was a good book, too, but far too close to home to sit well.
Or far too close to leaving, I should say. I was leaving.
So it seemed the perfect time to do what one doesn't usually do, so close to leaving. Fall in love, live in one house, go to work. Read books, take naps.
I didn't actually mean to take a nap. That was self defense. The book was on to something I would've appreciated not knowing at that time.
***
We had a schedule, you remember? You'd wake up at around 9, work on your thesis. I'd sleep til an hour later. Then we'd have coffee, and a bit of breakfast if you felt hungry enough to cook. Then you'd go back to work, and I would pretend to start packing my things. Then it was off to lunch, mostly at the school cafeteria, after which you'd be off to work. And so would I.
But I didn't have work that day, did I? Or perhaps I told you I didn't, hoping you wouldn't too. The weeks had trickled down to days--hours really--and I didn't feel like following the same schedule with so little time left. We had taken it for granted, all those weeks, and I wanted to tell you, Fuck the schedule.
But then you'd come home around 6, like you always did. And we'd have dinner and drinks with friends at that bar--what was it called again? No matter. We'd come home, make love, sleep. We couldn't fuck the schedule, we were too busy perfecting it.
How could we forget?
***
When I said I was pretending to pack my things, I really was packing my things. I would work at the kitchen table, near the window where I could smoke. Near the window that we never closed, despite the weather slowly turning to winter. I was typing up all the stuff I'd written in scattered notebooks across the two years, putting them in little files in my laptop.
Paper packs really tight, and heavy.
Computer files, on the other hand, weighed nothing. This is scientific fact. A laptop with as much free space as a clean slate weighed exactly the same as the same laptop packed to overflowing.
The same couldn't be said for my suitcase.
***
I couldn't carry everything home with me, as it was.
Most especially the book, since it was yours. So I was determined to finish it before I had to leave. I was lying in bed, that same afternoon I didn't mean to take a nap, just right after you gave me a kiss goodbye. I had opened it up to the last chapter, I think. I finished that book, I'm sure now, because I remember that last sentence. Then I fell asleep.
***
Or I forced myself to sleep. In any case, I remember waking up, thinking you'd come home. I thought I saw you at the bedroom door.
I got up and went down the stairs, but you weren't there. I was dreaming, godammit. I was dreaming and now I was awake, 2 long hours more to wait. I went to the kitchen and shove the 2 burners open, it was cold. It was 4PM, and only October, and it was friggin' cold. Colder I think for it being only summer a few weeks ago.
I sat down at the kitchen table for a cigarette, and that's when I notice it: The window was closed.
***
All this was quite some time ago. But sometimes, that window bothers me. Did you close it, or did I?
I had forgotten all this, to tell the truth. But I still have all those files in my laptop, and its memory, by God, far, far better than mine.
Or I would have said that, before I did both at the same time, quite some time ago.
You had just left the house for work, and I picked up the book to pretend I didn't mind the alone. It was a good book, too, but far too close to home to sit well.
Or far too close to leaving, I should say. I was leaving.
So it seemed the perfect time to do what one doesn't usually do, so close to leaving. Fall in love, live in one house, go to work. Read books, take naps.
I didn't actually mean to take a nap. That was self defense. The book was on to something I would've appreciated not knowing at that time.
***
We had a schedule, you remember? You'd wake up at around 9, work on your thesis. I'd sleep til an hour later. Then we'd have coffee, and a bit of breakfast if you felt hungry enough to cook. Then you'd go back to work, and I would pretend to start packing my things. Then it was off to lunch, mostly at the school cafeteria, after which you'd be off to work. And so would I.
But I didn't have work that day, did I? Or perhaps I told you I didn't, hoping you wouldn't too. The weeks had trickled down to days--hours really--and I didn't feel like following the same schedule with so little time left. We had taken it for granted, all those weeks, and I wanted to tell you, Fuck the schedule.
But then you'd come home around 6, like you always did. And we'd have dinner and drinks with friends at that bar--what was it called again? No matter. We'd come home, make love, sleep. We couldn't fuck the schedule, we were too busy perfecting it.
How could we forget?
***
When I said I was pretending to pack my things, I really was packing my things. I would work at the kitchen table, near the window where I could smoke. Near the window that we never closed, despite the weather slowly turning to winter. I was typing up all the stuff I'd written in scattered notebooks across the two years, putting them in little files in my laptop.
Paper packs really tight, and heavy.
Computer files, on the other hand, weighed nothing. This is scientific fact. A laptop with as much free space as a clean slate weighed exactly the same as the same laptop packed to overflowing.
The same couldn't be said for my suitcase.
***
I couldn't carry everything home with me, as it was.
Most especially the book, since it was yours. So I was determined to finish it before I had to leave. I was lying in bed, that same afternoon I didn't mean to take a nap, just right after you gave me a kiss goodbye. I had opened it up to the last chapter, I think. I finished that book, I'm sure now, because I remember that last sentence. Then I fell asleep.
***
Or I forced myself to sleep. In any case, I remember waking up, thinking you'd come home. I thought I saw you at the bedroom door.
I got up and went down the stairs, but you weren't there. I was dreaming, godammit. I was dreaming and now I was awake, 2 long hours more to wait. I went to the kitchen and shove the 2 burners open, it was cold. It was 4PM, and only October, and it was friggin' cold. Colder I think for it being only summer a few weeks ago.
I sat down at the kitchen table for a cigarette, and that's when I notice it: The window was closed.
***
All this was quite some time ago. But sometimes, that window bothers me. Did you close it, or did I?
I had forgotten all this, to tell the truth. But I still have all those files in my laptop, and its memory, by God, far, far better than mine.
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