Poems for Al Robles (2002)

I remember when Arkipelago Books was still in the Mint Mall on Mission Street near 5th. I was always dropping by the store, and I’d typically find Manong Al sitting in the Filipino restaurant across the hall from the bookstore. On a styrofoam plate, fried fish, steamed rice, vial of patis on hand. He’d be eating with his hands. He’d motion with those fishy hands to come have a seat. There would be some kind of sticky sweet rice dessert on his tray. He’d say, here, have some. There’s plenty. I’d drink my mango juice out of a juice box, and then he’d just talk, tell us (because there would always be three or four of us) some wild story, something he remembered from way back. That was some poetry, these acts of spontaneous talk story. And it was some of the best refuge from my graduate program’s whiteness and sterility. Around this time, I noticed Manong Al started calling me by name.

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A Poem for the Sky

Today I shall stand at the corner of 14th and Broadway,
Give passers-by poems tied in gold satin ribbons,
Tack them onto neighborhood bulletin boards
And lampposts. Today I shall fold poems into parking lots
Beneath each windshield wiper blade, and
Tape them up in the bathroom stalls of the local dives.
Today I shall write poems on bright strips of paper,
Set airplane and origami crane poems loose in the wind,
Weave them with daisies into chain link fences,
Slip them into glossy envelopes and place them
In the mailboxes of whole city blocks.
Today I shall tag up on pool hall walls with a fat black marker
In my fist, and carve poems into park benches
Overlooking the lake. Today I shall set paper boat poems
Afloat in rain puddles and sewer drains.

Because you said I should take it to the world.
Because poetry is arrival. Because I am here.

(2002)

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Fish Poem

Fish poetry and talk story,
Gathered around salmon heads
And tamarind soup songs.
Because you are here to share
Bowls of taro leaves stewed
In ginger and coconut milk,
Fried lapu lapu,
A good Riesling, chilled,
A six pack of San Miguel,
A pot of hot rice.

When I have no poems,
I’ll bring you fish instead.
When I have no words,
I’ll make poems you can taste.

(2002)

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(I am not thrilled with my inclusion of Riesling above, but to my credit, a German Riesling is a good pairing with homemade laing, and I make a mean laing. Abe Ignacio taught me how.)

I wrote these poems after Manong Al co-featured with Lawson Fusao Inada at the Poetry Center at SFSU in 2002. Again, one of those moments in which that space was transformed; no walls, just the city and us, all of the city’s people. During the event, and hanging out afterward there before I had to run to class, both he and Inada were boisterous, and meditative, appropriately irreverent of the space as a walled institution, telling us stories of being, that poetry was this way. Poetry was being. Poetry was being in the world.

We are off to a memorial for him today. I still just can’t believe it.