Our bodies are war zones where brave kisses fall like warriors
i. I am hard earth drunk with early October drought secretly eating out my barren chest with imagined erosion; every duskfall I spring with a wildfire dream to become surrogate mother to vegetation there is softness here waiting & waiting for you to bury somewhere in eternity after you unearth its language. do not be in a hurry to speak in tongues remember how silence is once a caterpillar how holy the hand gestures of a new-born sower before the butterflies in our bellies fell for monarchy ii. We are illicit as opium in the east, we spark war where sound minds easily come off as unbuckled pants. Desert-dry, we are each other's promised land and manna is nothing more than a shower from your manhood. While people play pharaohs, my Moses stretch forth your rod and burn, burn for these legs that part like valleys, red as an Egyptian sea
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Street worship
i. Time is flat as your back that made its bed on city skirts frayed as faith professed by tongues that burn for sex. ii. Temples itch. iii. I saw Christ in your broken smile and nailed Him with lips shaped by Iscariot. Someone In The Family Has To Write A Poetry Collection
I. Acknowledgment To my grandmother, You are still alive in our family house your kindness touching the throat of your most absent-minded grandchild lending her songs grace to swallow their wordiness to make more room for bridges Your morning recital of Pledge of Loyalty and Latin vespers resonate deep within the safety of our midnight truths Your laughter an old prayer book I hug to my breasts. God is playing metal here in the August of my regrets. My poetry a teenager mad at her sensitive skin ceaselessly praying to be wrapped in the December of her mother's embrace and disappear into the New Year of herself. II. Table of Contents You are not alone, but you are..... p. 1-3 You're better off without the persistent roar of your room..... p. 4 It's just a room, let's not think too much or we'd end up alone..... p. 5 She wrote to tell you she's dead a long time ago..... p. 6 Sometimes the family portrait is a birthday cake that cannot wait for the knife..... p. 7 Perhaps this book was written by women who did not report their rape..... p. 8-10 Some of you are men hiding your depression behind ready fists..... p. 11-12 As for me and my house, we deem saint the scent of mosquito coil..... p. 13 The way I dress is not my sister's favorite form of feminism..... p. 14 To be read when PTSD won’t let me get out of bed..... p. 15 If she wanted to support any radical movement, all she would do was admire herself in the mirror..... p. 16 Peace was nowhere in the scene during convalescence..... p. 17 But I'd shoplift Hope if I knew where you're storing it..... p. 18 To the woman wearing her bruises like statement shirts..... p. 19 Courage is a woman in plain clothes, uninvited to a masquerade party..... p. 20 Perhaps I write poems because I wanted no one to police my thoughts..... p. 21-23 Truth is a blue moon caught between her teeth..... p. 24 This page intentionally left blank..... p. 25 III. Bionote I write when the house grows a pair of guilt-driven hands that pull at my hair as if I were held responsible for the prayers in father's annulment paper the nervous laughter that has become the anthem of mother's kitchen my introduction to Leonard Cohen Nobody liked to eat their words here Nobody drank because they were pissed and wanted to write a poem Nobody took themselves so seriously they would forgive what they had not done when they were younger I am someone's daughter someone's sister someone important here in this room that was my grandmother's sick room It was here I penned "I'm So Sad Today I Could Write A Swan Song" under the influence of over the counter drugs for dengue fever it was here I felt my father touch my mother's hand one last time while hallucinating santan flowers they loved me, they loved me never, they loved me... My poem Some Hearts Fall Harder than October, appears in the latest issue of Constellate Magazine. A tribute to Michael Wayne Holland - a kind friend, beautiful poet and mentor who passed away in August 2015, this poem was first published in the Red Issue of Selah Magazine in honor of WORLD AIDS DAY (the main reason I wrote for them is because percentage of proceeds goes to the Crescentcare in New Orleans, an organization dedicated to the wellness and medical needs of HIV/AIDS patients; and having intimately known Michael's own struggle with the disease through his poetry and private conversations, I knew he would have approved).
Read the poem here: https://constellatemagazine.com/2018/12/01/some-hearts-fall-harder-than-october-geraldine-fernandez Buy a copy of the Issue where it appeared on print here: https://www.selah.xyz/physical-copies/selah-issue-4
Find my poem on pages 10-13.
This poem appears on print, The Red Edition in honor of World AIDS Day. A percentage of proceeds will go to the Crescentcare in New Orleans, an organization dedicated to the wellness and medical needs of HIV/AIDS patients. Click image to order a copy. Some hearts fall harder than October
i. On our worst days, we would still kiss find ourselves too lost in each other's dark alleys to remember the color of our country homes and their hate speech. ii. Before Sabbath, we were holier than most preachers more law-abiding than a few good lobbyists but our kindness was not meant to be popular much like our private library - loud only when we chose to be empowered by literature. iii. In the darkness of the fuschia scent of a hundred dying flowers, we felt we were travelling poets who had come home. For the little ones I'll never birth (Oprihory)
Light, I've always joked how I wished to carry your name like a stretch mark, bear you children who will die one day from chain-smoking so this morning, when I didn't find myself pregnant I begged destiny to piss off and stop joking that my womb is a body bag. Note to the bag I always carry around my shoulder, I should've replaced you with a backpack 9 months ago, ditched this province while it's dead asleep and allowed Providence to book me a night or two with Serendipity. Note to serendipity, Excuse me, but you don't happen to be related with pregnancy, do you? Dear pregnancy, Awfully sorry I treated you harshly when I was in my early twenties. If only I'd been gentler, I wouldn't have lost you so many times, my life would have been fuller and perhaps I wouldn't be asking the world today to keep screwing me. To my dear screwed-up self, stop googling happy poems. Be the poem you want to read. Dear readers, do you know the bruises on my mother's skin inspired my spoken word? My mouth is well-formed by the most forceful poet in my lifetime - my father's fist. Dear fist, you may grow bigger but you will never beat louder than my heart. Dear heart, they could try to take you away pull at your strings until you hurt too much you break into a war-song. But what you know of walls is that they echo the symphony wanting to burst free from your veins. Dear veins, I confess I only turn to you when I'm helpless each cut is a journal entry I hide from the prying eyes of pretend-psychiatrists who, thinking that they can find the root of loneliness below my navel ring, write this prescription: 'quit trying to spread your wings and spread those legs wider please.' Dear legs, These days, I guess you feel too much and easily tire for your own good. But thanks for letting me know that you have to pull more muscles to stand up for lovers than to run from haters that there is more danger in standing still in the safe zone than in running across your greatest fear. Note to my greatest fear, you have yet to show me how to tremble call the saints by their proper names but you only taught me how to gamble curse every form of holy. Note to everything holy, you are stained as your glasses bearing scripture stories that look nothing more than self-inflicted cuts, bruises so fucking vulnerable you're unbelievable. Don't think even for a second that I'll buy your testimonies 'cause you can name your price but not your god. Dear god, I didn't like the last guy you sent to bring the news. He killed me with poetic justice said I am Pasig River personified, everything that shares with my water will be born dead as the night driftwoods abandoned the ocean. This is how you said goodbye
The past nights words were feathered hermits that passed before your quill could grasp them and tonight is no different; you have not forgotten the taste of salt on fresh cuts the sound of secretive moans of a maiden still naked in her childhood sweater you only stopped documenting the miseries that remain faithful to their vow to build you a monastery. In your best days, you make eye contact with the world with your mouth but tonight, you are afraid you are afraid there is nothing healthy to say there has always been illness in your language but there were times when poetry was sickeningly beautiful too. So tonight, you only care to be honest the way Want only cares to be honest in front of I-wish-we-were-meant-to-be but too bad he’s no longer looking forward to touch you with his own despair and too bad “I’ll get over you soon” does not stand regal to be the beginning of a swan song. 5 POEMS, RIGOROUS, VOLUME 2, ISSUE 410/27/2018 http://www.rigorous-mag.com/v2i4/geraldine-fernandez.html There are cracks all over the place
Canada ~ I smoke Columbus in the waiting area of your paradise, new found land lit up, I feel marooned untouchable as still-wet paint while the color of my guts begins to peel away. There is something something worse than cold revulsion in the way I watch my fate unfold in cinematic slow-mo through generic faces: strangers who fall in line to use the washroom, hookers who tirelessly play hunger games. So here goes the summary of my real, screwed-up life story (mark it on my gravestone): I came. I saw. I cracked. Philippines ~ My history is a mess. Amsterdam ~ There is cancer in each hot stick that burns between his fingers, chapped lips and I can't wait for it to climb my bones stage by stage. "Your birth-place breeds disease" I tease then watch him grimace at my spoken poetry. "It's not haiku, silly." Silence. Mexico ~ Estoy loco por ti aunt Emma, Nora, Maria... chants the thirst monster in number 9 all night long. He calls himself el conquistador, babysits every new comer converts them into addicts with his crack catechesis. I was thirteen when I traded virginity for wings, let his Aztec fingers seek El Dorado between my legs while I made love with Herb and Al. Big man baptized me "Raspberry", his gun washed me white as coke conditioned me like I were Pavlov's dog to drool, drool for god's bones. hijo de la chingada! Iran ~ Aryana, How do you run from yourself after you have chased the dragon? When pressing the self-destruct button has metamorphosed from a habit to a mandate of heaven, when the spoon won't bend to your will won't feed you reality, when day-dreams and streams of consciousness have turned into canal water - stagnant, contaminated as a needle that won't leave your veins alone... how, tell me how to escape the bowtrap I and my demons have set up? I confess, I discovered Rumi - only good thing a spoon of brown sugar ever did me: There is morning somewhere deep down in me, its warmth longs to run in my bloodstream again My friend, I wish you were here to tell me I'm beautiful when I shatter, turn light yellow a tad unhappier than hepatitis. But you are on a trip sky high, no longer chasing dragons but searching for diamonds in Lucy's hands. I guess we never really run away from addiction, only change brands swing from crack to crack hit back to back until we become all stars until our surface appears like a crackhouse full of sores, needle tracks, death-marks that give Ugly a proper name till what's left of our bodies - once powerful warships, are skeletons. Untitled (for We are an Unfinished Poem) I. Remember that bashful young Filipina who would flush at every compliment you could muster? A decade after puberty, she flares up every time you casually tell her 'how she's grown more beautiful.' How we turn ill-tempered as we age, proud of our flaws yet unhappy with whatever strength still left in us. II. Hearts are buried treasures, untouchable like lapis jewels in Tutankhamen's tomb. What are we but dimwit hunters who have no idea that our eyes hold the map; We search elsewhere, in someone else's face. III. Every night, I invite the moon to bury her scars on my skin, your passive lover that still keeps the secret scribbles of your feathered quills, fingers that learn to stop beating around the bush. Your middle digit becomes a forceful poet. IV. You speak sweet-nothings about yesterday, waste ink to write: 'past is an unforgettable beauty'. Save your breath for the future, darling, will you? Use that muse to turn your present into a finer poem. I'm tired of reading history in your lips. I am Today. V. You still love her the fool I was before she uncovered the truth of her imperfect curves uneven skin tone --- impurities you saw but never mentioned. VI. How much longer will I have to condone your fascination for a flame that burned your blues (but already gone ?) She's nothing now but clear-cut memory, only spoken in third person. I starve jealousy (refusing to be her prey) ; she will not eat me not now, not ever. VII. Our insides beg us to forget our beginning (too beautiful to get over with). Let us will emptiness to bury us in its embrace and maybe, (just maybe) we'll find the need to string new words to fill the spaces with lines no scribe ever scrawled yet or with laughter that crackles like fresh snow. VIII. Lawrence, if nothing else works... please pretend I am the same yesterday. To that Dude Whom My Poetry is Borrowed From You care about how summer gains weight every year, how June is browner, heavier but obliviously braver; we banter about how it hoards cold cuts from winter and overindulges in spring leftovers. The sun dimples into a smile, amused at our foolishness He remembers our overheard crankcase conversation, when I wondered why I can't stare him in the eye and you told me, soft and brutal all at once: "...because you're too hypnotic you seduce snakes, and what only makes the sun less susceptible of your charm is its refusal to have eye contact. ...now forget that hotshot don't make me wish I have yellow eyeballs." One of those declarations from your deranged tongue that rouse dormant volcanoes from their abysmal sleep almost always, after you speak eruption follows suit. I pick up your language without knowing it is poetry. We never talk about black holes when we're in bed I just pretend to be the moon and you, the first man to reach me. We muster hate towards cliché but in the spaces of these seismic seconds we're convinced that we are supernovae. When our heads are not clouded with passion, we criticize the moon: she is anemic her face is flawed with enlarged pores and pitted scars. Yet she continues to shine despite our destructive criticisms. We are molded after her. An amalgam of masculine syllables and feminine sneer lashes at some tear-stained, dimwit stars; we scold them for falling. Some days, I realize we are overused metaphors who love despite our distaste towards conformity. When your lips correctly spell e-t-e-r-n-i-t-y while they press polite kisses on my skin I know then, we are regular people. It's when in your peculiar way, you look at the sky as if it were a mother's womb and appreciate the beauty of its stretch marks I am more convinced, we are special. gods nod their agreement while the world rolls her eyes in disbelief. My guts said: don't write anything beautiful today * Kamatayan --- ikaw ay dumarating na tila buwanang dalaw itong buhay ay parausan tayo'y dumadaing ng paulit ulit ulit hanggang ang lalamunan ay maging banal sa pakikipag-ulayaw sa kawalan. ** Asya, you haven't shaved in months haven't had sex with a Westerner nor masturbated to your father's Kamasutra but you are you are YOU ARE utterly sexy when you're shitty like that when you're acting up like a cold cold cunt quite reminiscent of An American Prayer's track number 8 Y'all, some of us like to touch what we can't restore to life I am you are we are the deficit in A D H D we are manic depression we are necrophilia but hey hey hey mother-----, we are beautiful in the most unsettled fashion [we're the hard(core) copy of god only six days holier than Chaos] Asya, has any one of your bastard sons bothered reading my love-notes to illness? In April 2014, I wrote: Bitch, you are more than mental you have been instrumental in finding the me I can't stand most of the time but the me I wish to get to know better without addressing soliloquies and oprihories to the goddamn mirror ! Dear mirror: you break therefore you are. Translation of * "death --- you come like monthly bleeding this existence is a red-light district we moan over and over and over till our throats turn holy from making out with nothingness.” In an attempt to look for a mitigating circumstance, I find myself guilty of aggravating the same Note to being conditionally admitted: Do not mistake law school for a confession booth; the chairs are reserved for the logical, not emotional signs, your horoscope holds. The sun is a judge that does not hear; he will rule against your favor, you proud moon child, you winter flower, you walking dissenting opinion. Note to the most opinionated girl in the room: Stop raising your voice like an unlicensed firearm. Go back to reading cases where voluntary surrender is appreciated. Note to voluntary surrender: You might be the best answer to the question marks that form part of my inner dialogues, to the heavy fist beneath my chest that matches the weight of the night slowly settling on a semester's worth of paper sheet. The triple shots of espresso cannot help calm the closet which has developed a healthy pair of lungs and stealth hands. Self-care does not come cheap and I am sorry that my daily budget is reserved for a cigarette, 750mb of internet bandwidth, and an economy room overlooking a bus station bound for my province --- as if reminding me of the necessity to go home to the same place that taught me that in life, I cannot choose to vote myself out of the cold battlefront, but I sure can take a smoke break just to feel warm again. https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2018/10/24/and-we-both-know-everything-but-we-cant-learn-to-leave And this closeness
will all be gone in the morning and we are again cold the graveyard we tend in our chests will grow quieter than the footsteps of a breadwinner returning home. Still we share this moment if only for the sake of having something to write that’s bittersweet enough to mimic the mood of poetry. AuthorJuly 13. Crab. Moon-child. Mood a barrel of whiskey. Poet of color. Emerging voice. Blue and non-hypoallergenic as mother's laundry soap. Archives
April 2019
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