migration(s) | multo
LAWDENMARC DECAMORA
some fridays can’t decide if they’re hot or cold, solid or gas, widowed or windowless.
some days like fridays i feel like saying i’m sorry. there are fridays that try to shut
the aortic valve but the aortic valve won’t shut. if i’m in another world, i don’t fuck up
because blind swirling herons stay swirlingly blind. this was before friday sang the blues,
before the last magnetism that came before happiness.
beloved departures, forgive my fridays if they are, like a multo†, capable of flight.
colored sky wild-haired
silhouette of beaks a binary
of titted space postcolonialism
eyes of thought susurrations
>>insert D I A & S P O R E S
blood kilometer feathered time
horizon shared my*grace*shuns
wings in delirium extra sago
still we free multo i
there is no poetry tonight. my evening headache is putting up the walls where alphabets
and tiny helicopters skip their shiny aerial extravaganza. my pen writes: ICU.
in critical condition are the words. in need of daemon boosters. i’ll be brief.
he wants you to read this note,
i still remember the way home.
† It is a Filipino folkloric term for a ghost.
some fridays can’t decide if they’re hot or cold, solid or gas, widowed or windowless.
some days like fridays i feel like saying i’m sorry. there are fridays that try to shut
the aortic valve but the aortic valve won’t shut. if i’m in another world, i don’t fuck up
because blind swirling herons stay swirlingly blind. this was before friday sang the blues,
before the last magnetism that came before happiness.
beloved departures, forgive my fridays if they are, like a multo†, capable of flight.
colored sky wild-haired
silhouette of beaks a binary
of titted space postcolonialism
eyes of thought susurrations
>>insert D I A & S P O R E S
blood kilometer feathered time
horizon shared my*grace*shuns
wings in delirium extra sago
still we free multo i
there is no poetry tonight. my evening headache is putting up the walls where alphabets
and tiny helicopters skip their shiny aerial extravaganza. my pen writes: ICU.
in critical condition are the words. in need of daemon boosters. i’ll be brief.
he wants you to read this note,
i still remember the way home.
† It is a Filipino folkloric term for a ghost.
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LAWDENMARC DECAMORA is a Filipino poet and writer with work published in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Common, Peripheries, Mantis, The Margins, North Dakota Quarterly, Seattle Review, The Columbia Review, South Dakota Review,among others. He is the author of the poetry full-lengths "Love, Air" (Atmosphere Press, 2021), "TUNNELS" (Ukiyoto Publishing, 2020), and the recently published chapbook "Dream Minerals One" (Ghost City Press). His poetry has also been anthologized in "The Best Asian Poetry 2021-2022," "Contemporary Surrealist and Magical Realist Poetry: An International Anthology," to name a few. A Pushcart-nominee and Tupelo Press 30/30 Project alum, Lawdenmarc lives in the Philippines where he teaches at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila.
/// To “(be) kaleidoscope(d)” is to engage yourself in something spectacular: a Barthesian re-imagining. Poetry imitates art, and it’s all about submission holds and finding that kayfabe-breaking moment on and off the page, or theatrically the stage. Aesthetically, I used to derive poetry from my own 'spectacle' of words, like the ropes in delirium, and of fragmented ideas re-contextualized in a spectatorial wrestling match. /// Conceived as one of the startling pieces in Line Affairs, the author’s unpublished poetry collection, “migration(s) │ multo” examines the psychosocial foundation of language and memory as well as the politics of migration. The ghost is a kind of multo in the Filipino lexis, which purports to permeate the consciousness of people—say, the Filipino family— hankering for the presence of the beloved, at least in the traditional aspect of remembering the dead. Likewise, mobility in the poem encourages the mental mapping of some familiar topography or language, albeit refracted and rhizomic. This is the reality the poem speculates, that is spectatorial more than spectacular: the recklessness and charm of the poetic line. Finally, the theme of migration based on the conditions of colonial influence and employment opportunities, as it were, may signify a performance of dissociated sensory images. Hence, the colorful voicing of diaspora amplified in the poetic lines, not to mention the desire to experiment with sound which can be a bit gossipy or hypnotic at some point. Take for instance this line: “if i’m in another world, i don’t fuck up / because blind swirling herons stay swirlingly blind. //” |