No corner goes undusted.
Pace between corridors—
These four walls, a palace.
Work-zone, chef’s line,
place of rest,
place of worship.
We notice new corners.
Polish them, sterilized for our pacing.
Our calves brush the edges of days.
Mornings blend as we walk
from one room, and back again—
a timeless holster.
History inhales, and holds.
Windows are new things.
Masks for new kinds of skyfall.
Barriers between collective them,
and nuclear us.
We scrub them—
through screens, we watch a season change.
What discoveries hide in these walls?
Which lie atop counters? Which shrivel under floorboards?
Which are shrouded by custom,
our routine eyes?
Ruptured habits—
Between a door frame,
my toes catch a homebound finding:
a scratch in our porcelain.
Take note, and pass.
Glitter-like. It spreads like that. Specs translucid
cling to us, our fickle strands.
Our hands outstretched, startled.
Flecks splatter in our palms, and stick—
invisible.
Glitter under sheets—our fate embalmed in latex.
Glitter, it crusts—it smears in strokes, and glazes.
We dwindle, but move.
Apart, we persist.
Tomorrow will glisten an iridescent shade.
New artistry, forward-viewing.
My Saba’s prayer book
idles on a pedestal
of magazines and opened mail,
receipts and peanut crumbs,
its borders, embroidered,
a mantlepiece for
yesterday things.
It reclines against routine,
drapes a holy face
over coupon clippings—
And I see my Saba in its binds.
Hear his humming
swell from the pages, pressed closed.
His scar, a crease in the spine.
His smile glints in the cross-stitching.
And he soaks his perch with his prayers,
my grandfather on our kitchen table.
When pearl turns invisible,
its glisten reduced to translucence
and alabaster drips
through the porch cracks.
Dims the wooden boards
during its downfall.
Does it bring with it splinters,
the manifest brilliance?
Does it soak its route
and gather trinkets,
chilled remembrances
of grounds which it stood upon?
Patches downsize
under the morning.
Silver layers strip,
its droplets
hung beneath the shade
of the porch’s underboards.
Another manifest—
Sharp in its being,
a jagged snapshot, for now.
I will be okay.
My mother gifted me
her mantra, her syrup reprise—
Saccharine coats my fatigue,
my thoughts and slow steps,
candied by her mantra.
I will be okay.
My heels soak its words,
toes submerge between its honeyed spaces.
Knees, immoble—
I am forced to breathe,
and I breathe its sweetness.
I will be okay.
“Lean into corners,” Ma tells me,
“and cushion their peppered crevices
with syrup.”
“Taste the sharpness
bitter at the base of your throat,
but taste first the syrup,
my mantra’s sweetness.”
I will be okay.
I will be okay.
I matchmake my meaning.
Words coalesce and
test their phrases,
taste pronunciation,
bite their tongue on slanted rhymes—
Blood dyes my meaning.
Note their mingling, my words—
curious, ambiguous.
Clasping over em-dashes,
forging a single expression.
Dissusable semantics.
A construction unique to their form.
Their verse question until written
declarative,
intangible until printed—
and even.
Scribbles threaten longevity,
page tears corrupt sense
of being,
fragile art.
Thrive in your drafts,
jotted existence.
Find meaning in your deletion
if you don’t make it past
this rough couplet
this rushed conclusion.
Outside these ridges, there is blur.
Wisped irresolution, unfocused wonderings—
Prints of unknown things
fuse in my periphery,
rim my sight with inquiries,
a halo of curious colors
a glance from distinction.
Remain sideways from foresight.
Encircle me in cloudy palettes,
questions and catechisms.
Let me daydream in fog,
eye roll from focus—
a prescribed perspective—
and muse in my blindness,
the mud crusting my eyes.
This blur, a visceral framework.
A constellation—I sketch in obscurity.
Form shapes from the smears,
on canvas of cloud tufts.
My lens, a crutch.
Prosthetic. It bends beneath
the weight of my imaginings.
She leans,
hip juts in clay skirts,
a cloth cast, wrapped. Glazed domestication.
Her waist pinched in naked air,
goosebumps smoothed by artist hands
and oven heat.
Hair pleated. Braided permanence.
And her eyes cast down,
and she always remembers her
Missing.
Phantom elbows bend,
shadow fingers mingle at the torso.
Raise lilies for her motion, in memory.
Her reminiscing, an apparition.
Her imaginings, a coy thing.
Envision what was,
her fantasies. Haunt her.
Stone dreams
of fingers twitching,
arthritic pain,
palms pricked by lily stems
and sharp leaves, gripping.
His nose blurs
from this side of the pane.
Fingertip smudges blot fine lines,
swipe detail sideways,
sweep across oval beige
that begs my eyes for clarity.
On seeing an emblem—
an unconceived sketch.
Nameless by distance
and fingertip prints,
by steps, uncounted, from car door
to coffee shop. This pane, a film.
I fill his face with my stories.
A name into his nose’s bridge,
a wife across his bottom lip,
purpose in his jagged jawline—
his blur, a wanting canvas.
Framed, made real.
This pane, a gallery.
Blur eclipses behind a car door, closing.
Stories rev with his engine.
Leave me to witness
a streetside exhibit,
anonymous things.
Yellow carpet foliage.
Papyrus trills matted with rainfall,
pressed by stepping sneaker soles
and ironed by baby carriage wheels.
Ruffles lift with the wind,
catch its rush under loose edges,
bend to wistful provocations of flight.
But these leaves hold their ground.
Steadfast, stubborn like concrete.
Mark their sidewalk space
and weave Autumn rugs
from curbside to doorframe.
Here, a blanket to catch our footfalls.
Frail threads pile to cushion our heels,
cradle the weight of our hurry
as we grind our boots into its permanence—
Its life, a temporary thing.
A welcome matt for cooler days.
These leaves invite our stepping
until winter crawls too close
to warrant welcome strolls.