Sample Poems by Eric Gamalinda
DMZ
At the end of my life I must stagger back to love,
my body a weight I am sick of carrying,
my pockets filled with intricate maps
and useless strategies.
I ask forgiveness of everyone who loved me
—you have been grievously misled.
I cash my name in, such a useful thing
—let’s hope someone else has more luck with it.
I return the suit I borrowed,
promises I couldn’t mend,
the happiness just one more quarter-inch
within my reach—loose change
still good for a pauper’s meal.
I surrender my history
and all memory, its ammunition.
The nameless claim me. Exiles
offer me a home. Who else sees me
as I truly am, just another vehicle
transporting so much fuel?
I light my anger like a pile of twigs.
I do this in the desert: it scares away
anything that will devour me.
I do this in the city, where the jackhammer
cracks the cranium of the earth, and nothing
can save me. I lose myself
among the restless immigrants,
their bodies still warm
from the lust and gunfire of slums.
Grief is a nation of everyone,
a country without borders.
I roam the avenues of it
out of habit. Summoned to testify
on everyone’s behalf, I’m sticking
to my story. It’s better not to talk
about the wounded, or the moist remains
of the disappeared. But there’s always one
who can tell, in the packed
amplitude of crowds.
We are so many bodies, my friends.
We all move in the same direction.
As though someone had a plan.
Sign Language
My friend speaks to me in sign language:
This is beautiful, and I’m afraid. The words leap
from her hands, a flicker in the dark. The motor
stutters, jungle mangroves drift and vaporize
to snowcapped peaks. Day fades to night, fades back
to day. Her hands busy, though we’ve already
lost each other, and she’s forgotten gestures
to describe what’s become inert, her love
turned perfectly invisible. The water
makes no sound, a furtive blue. We cross
the latitudes. Summer blurs to a storm.
We reach the city in the last long reign
of winter. The cobbled alleys glow. No longer
used to land, our feet drag over the stones.
We know we’re heading somewhere, blizzard-bound
on an empty bus. The windows are opaque.
A curfew has been called. The driver speaks
in echoes, a language we have yet
to understand. It’s been like this for weeks,
dropping strangers in the same blind-alley town.
The streets are pocked with holes. A man crawls into
an empty vault in a burial wall. He’s stolen
votive candles, his twilit cave burns like gold.
The wax rips through the punctured hands
of Christ, another illusion, as sharp
as the dream I see us in. My friend says
he will freeze in his sleep, a gentle death.
She tucks her hands in her pockets, warmth
and silence. This is where our story has to end.
In the square a woman offers us flowers:
a white cloud lifts in her hands. Her face
is a flower’s ghost, dirt brown, beautiful once
perhaps. Her children are numerous, fast asleep.
In a while they will walk among us, their palms
spread open to the promise of the world.
Plan B
I hope you never get tired of waiting for the world
to come to its senses. And that you have a quarter
for every homeless person who asks you for a quarter.
Like Sitting Bull, may you find America a hard place
in which to save the soul. If you listen closely the city
speaks your native language. I asked someone
for directions to the end of the world and he said,
Keep going till you can’t. Twelve years ago
I crossed six time zones, three continents,
half a lifetime. Existence is mathematics:
therefore your life will be as nearly perfect as mine.
I can’t recall the last time I truly loved anybody.
But in the corner of emotions I’ve kept the light on
for those who still can’t find their way. My father
pounds the walls in the shadow theater
of his grave. In my dreams the dead keep growing,
like fingernails or hair. If I could sum up
all that I’ve learned, here it is: Everything
eats everything. There is no escape. Galaxies graze
in endless space and outside of that who knows?
At some junction dappled with the residue
of stars, maybe you’ll find yourself as you were
a gigabyte ago. A quasar of desire. Your heart
as mortal as a bird. And when you speak
your voice forms a nest of trebuchets around you.
In the beginning was the Word. The rest is noise.