LUIS FRANCIA

AFTER DINNER NOTES / PEN PEN de SALAPEN /
MEDITATION #5 /
#8: POSTCARDS AFTER READING CELA / #11

AFTER DINNER NOTES

I like the language of burps
And hiccups,
The belch from the belly, the

Chant after a meal
Beep, beep in the
Bilge, burgeon and

Bulge. Arrow in
Water, I make the air
Listen, the catch in the long

Plumed throat, song of
Guttural and vowel—
Deep from my earth

Buried child, body saying,
All praise to earth and all
Its creatures I have fed on.

[reverse]

PEN PEN de SALAPEN

My pen can be a pen
Or un cuchillo de almacen

It can earn my daily bread
Or my daily pain
Loaves and loaves, or
Crumbs

My pen can be a pane
To open, or close
On what you will never see
Again

A gun a pen can be
Bring grief to some
Or be a wizard’s wand
Bestowing light, mystery

My pen can be everything,
Seeding on a sheet
a universe of verse

My pen wounds and heals
Raises me as easily
From death as can
Plunge me into it.
Hail, pen!

Ink god!
Write my life with
Your blood!

*in Manila, a line that begins a nonsensical child’s rhyme


[reverse]

Meditation #5

I almost forgot memory,
almost memory forgot me.

almost I didn’t start, almost never told this.
I’ve done now, I’ve said

almost something about the world,
about love and loss,

Something about what was almost.
Almost what remains of the past,

something almost to look back on,
nostalgia almost our only future,

for the old has become new, almost
and the trite, almost marvelous.

[reverse]

#8: Postcards After Reading Cela

I.

Here dangerous drowsiness.
He too comfortable at noon
Tries at being a shadow.

The roof’s a big black cat
The sun deals a fierce hand

He sees an idiot passing through
The plaza, naked

He has the wound of sadness
Everything crookéd, crackéd

Until spine-chilling
Jesus appears in the doorway.

II.

Lodging on the highway
The traveler a mule

Sky a high ceiling full
Of birds, dead crabs

His dream a maiden with
Sensual mouth, teeth

White, haughty
Moorish, he on a leash

Thoughtful hound:
His poverty was something.


III.

All is the road.
Imagination marionettes
Into traveler

A little swallow into sleeves

Blessed isolation
Behind rooms of
Disordered sheets
Twelve to fifteen lines

Per
Wait. I am the road
Once I have on

My boots, on
My jacket

New stroke of old clock


IV.

Writing some carefully
Smashing others
Optimistic head
Under

His pillow—the traveler
Watches, dog who
Lacks a bone, who
Gnaws

As half of nothing
Toward me man
Whether words or
Women

Loaded to the brim
Ordinary fields
Of them go, on
Bicycles of exhaustion