3 Comments


  1. TWO MORNINGS

    Waking up on Fifth Line when the ground fog
    creeps on moonlit streets like a late lover lost
    under slept-on sheets surprises me as still
    the best time to rise when mornings are really
    midday scrambles to catch something,: bus,
    tram, train, time, traffic, trash bins trampled
    over, reeking tramps, ad nauseam. I am still.

    On a porch, where houses are still better off
    with them, I sip my minted tea as serenely
    as I could, miming the movements of my mind:
    if I knew then what I know now, if I loved then
    as fiercely as I could have, if I could turn time
    around and give it a kick in its arrogant behind,
    if I could shelve that rushing sunrise and not
    waken to carpenter bees and highway buzzing…

    However languid or rushed my mornings are,
    does not matter now. Waking up still beats not
    getting up or not waking up to another still day.
    I am most still when I can feel my shoulders shrug.

    —Albert B. Casuga
    04-26-11


  2. Breviary

    If the carpenter bee asked the flower
    to strip its honey colors and lie still,

    that would be my double. All night
    I chased sleep and dreamt I was mere

    tendril, slighted by the wind: a bud
    you picked with your own hand.

    You wore me like a boutonniere
    though thin-veined and poor;

    like a valediction you pressed
    me against your own dun breast.

    – Luisa A. Igloria
    04 27 2011


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