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  1. A CHILD’S MAP TO EREWHON

    That there is a child’s map of buried treasure
    On a skim of sidewalk snow.
    Look, don’t they look like parallel lines
    Of arrows winding down to erewhon?

    Erewhon? O, that’s “nowhere” scrabbled
    Backwards, and it’s a new game, you know.
    Quite like tearing around for some gold
    At the foot of the lingering rainbow.

    Must have been the neighbour’s boy
    Absently raking leaves jutting out of crannies
    On the trail of blank snow, drawing lines
    Toward a warm home but missing the X.

    A child’s map is all we need this time,
    Just lines to somewhere, arrows into the air.

    —ALBERT B. CASUGA
    January 14, 2011


  2. Instructions

    “I drink from a small spring,/ my thirst exceeds the ocean.” ~ Adam Zagajewski

    Spanish folk music plays today on the sound system of this Turkish coffee shop where I come to sit and write and use the free wireless network (well, really, not completely free if you figure in the cost of the $1.64 glass copita of Turkish tea I’ve ordered, plus tax). A chorus warbles the refrain from “Granada” and ends with a flourish of castanets and foot-stomping. Then more guitars, more singing. I can almost see the women’s arms dipping and lifting, maneuvering their ruffled bata de cola skirts, which troubles the oversized flowers they’ve pinned in their hair. I notice that the girl tending the espresso machine has cut her long hair since I was here last; she’s looped a scarf of silvery grey around her neck though everything else she wears is still black. On the coffee stand by the window, someone has placed a pair of embroidered felt slippers, perhaps the kind a minor pasha might have worn indoors or on his way back from the bath. Outside, a skim of snow’s imprinted on the walk with winding, parallel lines of arrows, like a child’s map to buried treasure. The sun, guest maitre d’ this noon, parts the potted greens and signals for me to take my time, cup my fingers around the bowl; sip the tea while it’s hot, but slowly.

    ~ Luisa A. Igloria
    01 14 2011


  3. Glad to see you on the porch, Luisa. Now, you see what you have done to these old back bones? They are stretched, too, from a habit of stoop. The bonus, of course, is the poetic limbering.

    Your “Instructions” is lambent. Can see the castanets, too. And hear the penultimate lines of the song: “Granada, tu tierra esta liena de lindas mujeres; la sangre del amor.”

    -o0o-

    To: Dave Bonta — Thank you for the poetic limbering space. Bravo. hombre! See you at the porch tomorrow. (“Of arrows winding down to erewhon” is the cleaned up fourth line in my poem above. Remove repeated “to” — [too eager to post, I was…] :) Will repost this in my litblog with notes of Morning Porch meditations. I like the new header.

    Albert


    1. Fixed! (I must’ve read it too quickly, too — I didn’t notice the extra “to” there.)


        1. This porch is like Vimalakirti’s room: it expands to accommodate all visitors.


  5. A map
    with nothing on it
    but an X


    1. Unlike me, Bob takes the via negativa seriously!


  7. My death is a map with
    nothing on it but an X:
    no schemes, only stifled slices of shit, lotionless,
    smudged, wrenched, my stark pygmy robot
    aghast on the mirrorless highboy,
    injected with aches and the difficulties of
    muffled colors, inlayings of layers of
    dismembered deaths metastasized —

    & maximite,
    its sneak attack of lettuce and fleece
    is fucked up, O fraudsters
    lashing out, amphetamined,
    bobbing, crossed out, elaiosome —
    you rankled flakes, you devour my
    sun smitten coma, my untouched hummus
    glowing rancid in the moonlit cove:

    I am untouched by your starlit breath;
    it is not contextualized or saturnine,
    my splayed death is athwart attenuated drool,
    a trickle within at the point of my hip
    where a penetrating chenille-needle
    is three-legged, chippy, it erupts in stains,
    a murmurmur.

    Pothos ivy blossoms when I lick the ladle
    of the opposite of death, hoofnecked in
    the sullied vestibule, yop, flank, forehead
    withers, hockcheek hocker,
    peepee opening of the stringy barndoor,
    unadjustable flaps minced efter I ring
    the buzzers, couched in dewpoints,
    & fah, not all undone yet:

    –Bob BrueckL
    ?


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