Skip to main content
Read page text
page 26
Daniele Pantano Birth Certificate (Counterquestions) When the investigator arrives, I name him here I am. I name him motherland. No one will see you. I have given birth in the mirror. A tatum, in all likelihood. Or Kokoschka’s sex doll. Ruptured and headless, of course. Don’t we name what we name to understand what named us? The only truth is how water speaks to the moon. What are we waiting for? The more important the man, the sicker his sexuality, wrote Alma Mahler. No one will answer you. The committee. Between your questions, us. Indeed. She wrote, my fantasy is full of the most perverse images of cripples and seeking crippledom. And did you get what you wanted? You are never within, never without. Let me, too, be an invisible act. Compassionate, selfless, yes. What is between a doll and a pulse, a skin and a lashing – this newborn and the next? Kathleen Ossip Words on a Monument We do not regret our time though our motives smudged and the atmosphere plummets. We are only a minor aftereffect of the Greeks, inexplicably un gone. 24 Poetry London | Spring 2022
page 27
Romalyn Ante Agimat A child bears many faces, but mine etched only the panic of dusk. So my Inang chanted, transplanting a spell to my blood. Agimat ko hiningáng-bugâ sa aking noó. * Soon, I stopped recoiling from the bark of the next-door Doberman. I whistled, strolling past metacarpal twigs that scraped into kapre’s hands. Inang said, Lahat may Agimat passed down to every child: this charms the buried light of stars – this deflects bullets – this unblooms a war – * But I’ve forgotten all the trees of our town. How once, astride a branch, I coaxed god to come down—in trade of ginger lilies plucked from a centaur’s ribs. * This clinic’s yellow wall is a ticking bomb; my swivel chair a quicksand. I gasp but I can’t drown every time a child knocks, Nurse, I cut myself again. A rolled up sleeve. Dried herring- bone of scars. In the season of arachnids, a Year 9 leaped off a cliff, believing her shadow dragged the red-granite wind. * Nurse, in my hometown, sunrise blasts like gunpowder; dusk sizzles with fragments of flesh. I laid dried dates onto my father’s plate, filled oil jars with copper coins I earned from brushing factory rugs. His only Agimat, gold motes rising to his face. * I took a peek – Father furs into a wild boar, meth-bright tusk stabs Mother at her cheek. * Ang mga batàng ito tinákid ng anino. Agimat, tagóng-dulo – paano matatamô. Ang áwit, papagáyo – hinehele ang gulo, lúhang awas titímo, titíbay yaring puso. * Last night a mound of laundry swelled into a wreckage. My father’s hand poked out, asterisked with black powder and blood. * Ang mga talúlot binayó ng hángin – nasa hagdán. A spine may snap from the strike of a loved one’s hands but the Agimat won’t crack under the blue ice of England. * There is a place where grazed knees and elbow wounds become bearable – where a child crawls out of the bruises of a field – into a dusk so lustrous heaven marinates itself. I will rehearse the Agimat-bearer’s chant until a child can sleep in the lullaby of unearthed skulls and a spine glows like a tower in a rain-swept town. May this clinic coagulate into a cave with vines that swallow the door beams, a burl that encrusts the knob – I will chant and will a chant until no child knocks, Nurse, I cut myself again, and a girl will only leap unbreakable into the whirlwind. Poetry London | Spring 2022 25

Page Text

View plaintext

Daniele Pantano

Birth Certificate (Counterquestions)

When the investigator arrives, I name him here I am. I name him motherland. No one will see you. I have given birth in the mirror. A tatum, in all likelihood. Or Kokoschka’s sex doll. Ruptured and headless, of course. Don’t we name what we name to understand what named us? The only truth is how water speaks to the moon. What are we waiting for? The more important the man, the sicker his sexuality, wrote Alma Mahler. No one will answer you. The committee. Between your questions, us. Indeed. She wrote, my fantasy is full of the most perverse images of cripples and seeking crippledom. And did you get what you wanted? You are never within, never without. Let me, too, be an invisible act. Compassionate, selfless, yes. What is between a doll and a pulse, a skin and a lashing – this newborn and the next?

Kathleen Ossip

Words on a Monument

We do not regret our time though our motives smudged and the atmosphere plummets. We are only a minor aftereffect of the Greeks, inexplicably un gone.

24 Poetry London | Spring 2022

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content