EILEEN TABIOS
Five poems from ANACHRONISMS

SECOND LANGUAGE / A MEMORY'S RESONACE DU JOUR (II) / GRANDMOTHER'S FABLE

SECOND LANGUAGE
As Gabriela Blunts EdgesI expected the dissonance

I expected the dissonance
of blunt words--

Domineering nuances
become inevitable

"whilst" colonizing
a new vocabulary--

"Cunt" is blunt--
"Vagina" is bloodless--

"Pussy" is ridiculous--
"Blunt" is meticulous--

I want to mimic M.M.
who stopped "hurrying after

words" to obtain a Ph.D.
in "the circling of bees"

allowing her lavishness
with "Honey" as endearment

and honey
as mucus enticement--

Set free those post-
breakfast fears

Find a sweetheart
to feed, to eat--

Cook a soup of transparency
spiced by yellow teeth--

I will dry your humongous feet
with ebony hair

glistening like the wings
of my childhood's hunting birds--

Let everything continue
to bristle between us

Between my thighs
a video lies--

I want to choreograph
shadows of phantoms

the universe shall rate "X"
"owing to a failure to articulate"--

[reverse]

A MEMORY'S RESONACE DU JOUR (II)
As Gabriela Struggles To Apply Significance

One wants to slap any majordomo
For believing he controls the equinox

Until I shy from physical fulmination
As someone obsessed with oxymorons-

The doughty poem offers its own significance:
e.g. ancilla for "Understanding James Joyce"

And saffron-colored mulsum and turriculae
Imbibed by Romans turned inane then insane

From raisins fermenting in ill-designed earthenware--
Oh, my Love--how many civilizations expired

After marauding soldiers were deceived
By myrrh, honey, balsam and pepper

Camouflaging spoiled wine in amphoras
Now lining the Mediterranean?

Thousands and thousands of shards deliver
an inadvertent memoir of an empire's fall--

Bones from a million rebels
Become my history whenever I exhale Poetry--

[reverse]

Grandmother's Fable
As Gabriela Pines for Chicken Adobo

I feel I should savor
my childhood measure of a house

where grandmother
gave birth with abundant abandon

where grandmother died
more radiant than a sun's implosion--

Seashells adorned the sills
for so many windows--

I could feel grandmother's
disbelief in walls--

Capiz shells introduced
Corot's "The Origin of the World"

with mica flakes peeling away
as slowly as a vintner's "bad year"--

A modest interior
refuted jagged angles--

Clouds of cushions
recycled chicken feathers

softening every piece of narra furniture--
Against hand-stitched covers

white lace and silver sequins
collaged together angels

as if they could never fall:
as if a harpsichord could last an eternity--

From this one visit
to grandmother's house

I choose to immortalize
another woman's lost history

aided by translucence
and another poet's "transposition

of birds into daughters"--
Grandmother stewed chickens

with soy, vinegar, salt and pepper--
I always ate more than one helping

foregoing milk for rice wine
as I prefer my tongue

sodden, thus, fulgent--
I feel I should savor

memory as proof:
Someone shall remember you and me

[reverse]