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A weekly video reading of poetry by the poet.
LOOKING PAST THE BIRTH
As Gabriela Reconsiders Everything
(—after Claudia Rankine’s reading of “Plot”
and Doug Aitken’s video “Into The Sun”)
by Eileen Tabios
I am learning not to yearn
for amnesia. As when I see
dragonflies off-kilter
shoving through air
like husbands with bruised eyes—
Black dimes interrupt the sun’s glare:
an experience familiar to
travelers visiting “Namibia
in search of pure light”—
But thermodynamics of farewells
yield “the scent of armpits,”
the spoor of exhaustion. Until
what holds up the room is
a riding crop
propped against a wall—
The thin leather line
cracks a field of vision
and if, as you say, “each cut
generates a new affair”
I am not surprised—
For centuries, woodcarvers
immortalized stigmata
on the limbs of virgins and saints,
eyes wide and white
to manifest exaltation—
Yesterday, a long-lashed poet
clad in Prussian silk sweetly
declared, “I am in love
with the stock market!”
Somewhere, a typhoon
has failed to devastate
a landscape brimming
with violets, turtles, and dandelions—
I feel a memory
surface from days of unremitting light
when I ignored all ancestors
to stare directly at the sun:
the cool dimness of a cathedral
where hands penetrated marble bowls
for holy water whose oily musk lingered
on my filigreed fingers
as if to sheath my flesh
against all that will come
all that will not come
and the accompanying relevance,
if any, of Love—