Kundiman In Medias Res

[magneticsyntax.livejournal.com]

Kundiman In Medias Res
Patrick Rosal

and I like sometimes to begin
in the middle of things
your breastbone/navel
the small of your back
your hand's syntax pausing
at the comma of my thumb
I love your 700 questions
each strand curled long
across my lips the sudden
punctuation of your spine
Your mouth an interrogative
sliding from unknown
to unknown They say
one sign leads to another
I say each tastes vaguely
like blood Along my body's
broken lines I am still unwritten
by your fingers' calligraphy

Love--decipher me
Speak me with your first tongue

---------

Filipino poets, FTW. :)

Kundiman = traditional Filipino love song :)

Everything Is Beautiful from a Distance, and So Are You -- Michael Blumenthal

[aimlesswanderer.livejournal.com]

Everything Is Beautiful from a Distance, and So Are You
by Michael Blumenthal

The young clarinetist, playing Mendelssohn's Sinfonia #10 in B-minor
in back of the orchestra may be exceedingly beautiful, it's hard to know
from here, just as I, to her, may be gorgeous myself and the day, in

retrospect, divine, as all the past loves of my life have been, and that boring
evening in County Derry as well, oh yes, they are all beautiful, now, when
I look back upon them, as, no doubt, my life will seem from some calm

and beautiful distance, some rapturous perspective, but here in the here
and now let me say that it's midafternoon, my lover is on her way over,
it's been a long chilly day in Budapest, what I thought was a herniated disc

is not, after all, a herniated disc, Mozart's 250th is behind us, as is the 60th
anniversary of Bartók's death, and it is only James Taylor on the stereo—
sweet, sentimental James—and I don't give a damn what anyone thinks

of my taste or emotional proclivities, I only know it's Thursday and in
an hour I'll be making love, and, looking up at me from the pillow,
my lover may or may not consider me beautiful, or even desirable,

but the deed will be already done, the evening before us, there
are roasted red peppers and goat cheese in the refrigerator, I'll be
as far from death as a man can be, oh can you imagine that?

The Mission, Kevin Young

[moireach.livejournal.com]

The Mission
Kevin Young

Back there then I lived
           across the street from a home

for funerals -- afternoons
           I'd look out the shades

& think of the graveyard
           behind Emily Dickinson's house --

how death was no
           concept, but soul

after soul she watched pour
           into the cold

New England ground.
           Maybe it was the sun

of the mission,
           maybe just being

more young, but it was less
           disquiet than comfort

days the street filled with cars
           for a wake --

children played tag
           out front, while the bodies

snuck in the back. The only hint
           of death those clusters

of cars, lights low
           as talk, idling dark

as the secondhand suits
           that fathers, or sons

now orphans, had rescued
           out of closets, praying

they still fit. Most did. Most
           laughed despite

themselves, shook
           hands & grew hungry

out of habit, evening
           coming on, again --

( the home's clock, broke / like a bone )