Fusebox

I am including this Fusebox 3 page here, because Rattapallax has since removed Fusebox from their website, which is nothing I blame them for, for we know not even the internet provides us permanence. But this selection of F/Pilipino American Poets is in my estimation a very good one, which I guest edited for Fusebox 3 in December 2003.

* * *

Contributors: Patrick Rosal / Paolo Javier / Sarah Gambito / Tony Robles / Jason Bayani / Irene Faye Duller / Maiana Minahal / Joel Barraquiel Tan / Irene Suico Soriano / Michelle Macaraeg Bautista / Joseph O. Legaspi

* * *

Patrick Rosal is the author of Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive (Persea Books). His work has been published in many journals and anthologies including North American Review, Columbia, The Literary Review, and The Beacon Best 2001. He has been a featured reader at many venues in and out of NYC, from Boston to Daytona Beach, as well as in London and on the BBC’s “World Today.” He is currently Assistant Professor of English at Bloomfield College.

[ Pick-up Line Ending with a Prayer ]

When I tell la Colombiana I first met
a week before Tu nombre
se queda conmigo I know
this is a bad idea but
she doesn’t stop me
with her stock stone stare
that sends away every other man
who’s tried to speak to her tonight
I pull up my left sleeve
to show the sea and sun
tattooed on my forearm then
point and say her name
Mar-i-sol She smiles
I don’t tell her the tattoo is a myth
of creation: a bird’s trick to yoke
heavens and ocean in a titanic
barroom brawl: the ancient scrap
which has begotten all the continents
of desire: even the four-foot liquor-stained
ellipsis where Marisol and I will stand
at the corner of a crowded New Jersey dance floor
some 500 millenia later

I need to know something
about the legacy of beauty she inherits
the way a coastline inherits salt
I have yet to learn the catalog of unloved
gestures a woman lets no one read
I have yet to understand grace
is not the absence of awkwardness
but an accumulation of so many
quirks the body finds a way
to make them happen all at once

Lord my job tonight is to fashion lies
as with any life-long ambition
I may not deserve to fall in love But
let this be true — the beginning
in which there was only an ocean and a star
and a little pain we called distance
Let there be a bird with nowhere to alight
who taunts the heavens to water
who riles waters to the heavens
Let there be mar-y-sol Let there be land
and one day let it contain a dance floor There
let me recognize human grace when I see it:
every mis-step and slip
every foible and fuck-up
Let me know them
like the first errors of the sea

* * *

Paolo Javier is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection The Time At The End Of This Writing (Ahadada Press, 2004), & edits 2nd Avenue Poetry, a new website devoted to poetry. He is currently completing his MFA at Bard College, & teaches at New York University & Hunter College. He lives in Queens, NY.

[ Charlotte ]

locate my heart somewhere between Daikanyama & Rego Park
built on the side of the road
placed 4″ into the ground & surrounded by dirt
stretched across approximately 85 feet of grass
situated above the gorge of Samaria
on the lakefront, nestled on the hillside
overlooking beautiful Holland lake
in the Lebanon hills

my heart is a manger in Bethlehem
my heart is a golden dome in Marrakesh

my heart is in its 15th year of providing service
as a help & emergency rescue unit
always overrun with gps
my heart is a nonprofit animal rescue organization
staffed mainly by volunteers
my heart is proud of its diverse workplace
my heart is up & running

my heart is always in short supply of the following items: tamago sushi, jackets from Zara,
& your unrivalled affection
my heart is a non-sequitur
my heart is a lion
my heart is a pianola Pietro Crespi tunes in the village of Macondo
my heart is a large outdoor cooking grill
my heart is a domestic violin
my heart is a ripe, ripe mango
my heart is actually many hearts in one
which makes it so hard to choke
my heart is a Japanese pop song by Happy End
my heart is the body’s elevator that leads you directly to the brain’s
anterior cingulated cortex
my heart is a member of the Royal Union
my heart is heavy with the thought of it
my heart is the place to start
when things fall apart
my heart is improving

my heart opens between sleep & dream
my heart swims on the upstream side of the dam

my heart is holding her own with all the free weights at the gym
my heart is struggling to express herself over the din of bad torch songs & buses
my heart is not someone the press has warmed to during her erratic career
my heart is too young to have experienced much of the 1970s that it’s representing
my heart is determined to show adolescence at its worst in this aesthetically conventional
but refreshingly light & entertaining look at the teenage years
my heart is a decent actress
my heart is an avowed fan of Haruki Murakami’s novels
my heart is hopelessly amateurish
my heart is as bad as has been said hundreds of times before by the press
my heart is not an actress
my heart is not her father nor her husband
my heart is a babe with a big, blue ox
my heart is a filmmaker with a light touch
my heart is actually doing quite alright these days
without the cameras in her face

my heart is drenched in wine, but you’ll be a stain on my sheets forever
my heart is saying now “baby you don’t know how you live in my dreams”
my heart is an open book, so “don’t believe all those lies, darlin’ “
my heart is nearby, but still your hair stands on end
knowing full well that
my heart will never ask you to take off your shoes –

baby, tonight, my heart opens its cab doors for you

* * *

Sarah Gambito’s poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Antioch Review, The New Republic, and Fence. She holds a MFA from Brown University.

[ Diads ]

I return, therefore, to my theory on diads. This way
of thinking originated probably in 1995 when I met a
boy who made stews and wore red sweaters. They
reached for each other and they felt so young.

Tale told of a fisherman, many, many fishermen who
stole the rumpled clothes by the shore and returned
home with a girl with a certain damn twist to her
lips. She’s a selkie, a silky. She’s a seal. She’ll
never be at home.

I think of holding children though and do sometimes.
After a while (with stewed carrots)
I whap my tail. I really don’t care.

I look at my stomach in the bathroom. I think of
myself 10 years ago when I first started working.
How I smiled at everyone behind my register.

* * *

Tony Robles was a toilet cleaner, oystershucker, motherf*&ker, daydreamer, dishwasher, poet, father, son, nephew, bretheren, scripwriter, poet, failed disc jockey, pool cleaner, lawnboy, weedpuller, drain cleaner, Chinese food critic, and poet.

[ Holy Water ]

The church has
stood for nearly
a century

its bricks have
withstood
earthquakes,
gentrification

Bricks held together
by a mixture of
straw, bone and
marrow

The elderly attend
mass
there

Business folks, working
class folks drop in
during the course
of the day

Walking by one afternoon,
i witnessed the
unthinkable

utter blasphemy
of the
worst kind

a manong
with a baseball
cap pushing
a shopping basket

with grace and
absolutely
no shame

he walked up
to the front of
the church

unzipped his
pants and urinated
on the wall

people
walked by

some looked,
some pretended not
to notice

the manong
was oblivious

the sun was
out and a homeless
man nearby sat on
the ground next to

an empty
cup of
change

i walked
away

feeling
blessed

* * *

Jason Bayani is Filipino writer born and bred in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a regular in the Bay Area slam poetry scene and has been a member of Team San Jose in 2002 and the Berkeley/SF Unified Team in 2003. He is currently the grand slam champion of Berkeley/San Francisco. Jason is also a member of the Asian Spoken Word Collective, Proletariat Bronze. As a spoken word artist, he has been featured alongside Talaam Acey, Shane Koyczan, Bao Phi, Goapele, Zion I, Biz Markie, Mystic and you can see him in the hip-hop documentary Soundz of Spirit. When he’s not performing he’s at work counseling homeless youth in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

[ Rosary Sue ]

There are roses on the sidewalk this morning
on Polk street
nestled between a liquor store and a Laundromat
that doesn’t have a change machine
so the liquor store never has any quarters
There are roses on the sidewalk this morning
they told me last weekend some kid was shot here
bled here alone wondering where his purpose went.
Nobody sees it
except me and this tranny junkie
by the name of Rosary Sue,
they call her that cuz they say
she done traded in all of her marbles for beads.
Like me she hasn’t slept all night.
She got a taste for lacing her medical marijuana with crystal meth
and I am on my second graveyard shift of the week
trying to buy a pack of cigarettes for the drive home.
Because there’s nothing like inhaling cancer causing toxins
a day after listening to news broadcasts
talking about the bridge you gotta drive across
being a potential terrorist target.
I’m a sucker
I hear Orange alert
and start a running list of things
for God to consider as to whether or not he really wants
to take me out just yet
But I saw roses on the sidewalk this morning
arced against a dull green wall
and I felt my chest expand in bloom.
Me and Rosary Sue
who wanted the world to think she was beautiful
couldn’t hide the vomit and loose change she held in a paper cup
her back unaccustomed to her symmetry
so she slouches a bit
holds her nose above the roses and says a prayer
reminding me that one moment can make magic
for one person who needs a miracle
and yes there was a miracle
held six feet above a shrine
Rosary Sue gives me a wink
and a half hearted smile.
I know that she is dying
I’ve seen that look before
Skin paled and dried out
brow sunk and sullen
the reds of her face given way to a touch of blue
it has taken her
the diminishing T-Cells
the once massive presence betraying it’s stature to frailty
she wears her status on her shoulder
in blood and ink
two thick black lines
intersecting in the middle
no longer afraid of the consequences it bears.
Rosary Sue the abomination before God
the walking freak show
Rosary Sue
who can tell you how glorious a sunrise is because
she has spent the past few years of her life
making sure she didn’t miss a single one of them
Rosary Sue, with hands as thick as a german chef
grasping the air about her to breathe in the scent of roses
for a man she may not have known
And for one second I saw the buildings rumble
heard the creak of tempered glass
the street shook I swear it
all of her
big boned and boisterousness
held aloft and reckless
there are ghosts who live
and Rosary Sue knows
one day soon she’ll join them.
She just had to let them know
something fabulous was coming their way
Most days I still think about bombs going off in the city
get nervous every time I cross that bridge.
I know poets who get frustrated
because they feel ain’t nobody listening
but forget to listen to those who are living
and it was this Tranny junkie by the name of Rosary Sue
who taught this man
that being alive
is sometimes just as simple
as taking one deep breath
of fresh air

* * *

Irene Faye Duller

[ Working title: making love 2 L I G H T ]

i heard that too- all of us…made up of stars.
i had a feeling- I smelled it in you.
your kisses had me defy gravity like that,
til this day- straight suspended.

much like making love to light
lotus position in your temple, heaven-kind
humble and hungry and wonder-filled
embraced tightly in a rhythm unique

it’s the only thing i don’t question
the godness in you- moonifested
and full bloomed, I am a blessed
and accidental benefactor
damn. got me open….wide.

much like making love to light
the shining that seeps into every pore
yearning for perfection-flawed
craving for it, for tempo and triumph

deliver me to dusk and queen me
i assure you, i was born for it
read my lips like the torah or the alcoran
or believe my pelvis, either or.

much like making love to light
and music at the same time
but time is not welcomed at all
maybe will be invited one day… to watch

somewhere far
someone is
wishing on us
as we twinkle

* * *

Maiana Minahal is a queer Filipina American poet and teacher, born in Manila, raised in Los Angeles, and currently living in San Francisco. She studied with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program, and is published in numerous anthologies. A recipient of an Artist Award Grant from the Serpent Source Foundation, she is one of the founding members of the Queer Pin@y Kreatibo collective, and is an Artist-in-Residence at the Jon Sims Center. She has performed and taught workshops in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, and Austin. Maiana’s first book of poetry, Sitting Inside Wonder, was recently published by Monkey Press.

[ oriental ]

curious. a curiosity.
from it, make other words:
“orient,” (of course,)
then “tale” and “tail” (spelled 2 ways).
“eat,” “rite” and “rot.”
“lent,” “rent,”
and almost “enter.”
almost “eaten.”
“toil” and “tire,”
“tier” and “tear” (spelled 2 ways),
“tare” and “tear” again (spelled 2 ways).
not quite “tall,”
no “talent,” no,
but “neat” and “late.”
almost “other.”
almost “silent.”
“i.e.” “or.”
“la orient”!

* * *

Joel Barraquiel Tan was born in Manila in 1968. Joel received his BA in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley and his MFA at Antioch University. He is the author of a poetry collection, Monster and the editor of the Best Gay Asian Erotica Series (Cleis Press). Joel’s poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in numerous popular and academic venues. Joel lives in Long Beach with his lover.

[ Boys ]

my lover points into the trash heap. there are four jammed inside a wire crate, cloth covered & hardbound. boys will be boys, gilded fonts wink under the sun. black & white images of tykes on a bridge, 10 of them in shorts & white socks, bottoms up, hanging over a bridge. a towheaded freckled monster pecks his twin, not quite the mouth not quite the cheek. a gawky long-limbed pre-teen, hairless & naked is suspended above a huge trampoline in mid-bounce, his pale arms outstretched wings. the air is radioactive, teaming with gulls. as

papa lay dying, i peek underneath his face, the gray skin hiding the hot springs of naga. the smell of boiling salted duck eggs & ancient mud. his white-skinned father, sits on a cement bench, scowling & spitting into the bubbling pool. it is twilight & papa, a boy short for his age, calls me into himself & with his finger traces the shapes of my eyes, nose, and mouth on the water’s surface thickening with his father’s phlegm. now, i place a mask over his. my face as a child, airy meringue skin cheeks & cool skin, lips

pursed. a child’s mouth is always ready for kissing. then, my tio, a tall beautiful teen from the provinces bites & nibbles on my lips. tio calls me sweetmeats. mama dresses and powders me like a doll. i run around with my feet arched, balancing on tippy toes like a squat daft ostrich dashing about. i whiz by papa disgusted, mama amused, & tio hopelessly in love with my ballerina sprint & protruding belly. there is a photograph of me and tio. my small body fitted between his legs. his hand inside my shirt. my head thrown back, laughing. had the communist guerillas not thought tio a

traitor, he would be here now. with me and papa in this hospital room. in silent vigil. when papa got word that tio’s corpse was found, mangled by vultures & hanging from a tree, his face smoothed over and set, clay cooking from within. had he done as i told him, had that stubborn boy finished university…papa throws his glass against the wall, a shard scratches past my cheek. I turn to run but papa’s blow to my small back knocks me flat on my face. he stands over me, screaming, you are not a bird! you are a boy ! you

are the first son as i am the first son as my father and his! & then nothing. Just blue & dreams & tio calling sweetmeats. sweetmeats. when the nurse tells me its almost over, i stand up. joints stiff from a lifetime of watching papa die. my lips throb, the silence presses against me like flat heated stones, the stink of sulfur suffocating. im told that had tio lived, he would’ve grown old to look like me. i hover over papa & lean in to kiss him on the lips. papa’s wet sputter, his phlegm thick

in my throat. then papa becomes the small disinfected room widening into the empty los angeles summer streets. Papa becomes whitening bone and concrete and the tinkling of a paleta cart bell building and multiplying into a network of freeways. Papa is the ocean bringing the separate parts of itself together again & i am a seabird, no longer a boy, my arms, muscled brown wings hovering over the rage of saltwater, thick with phlegm, sinking continents.

* * *

Irene Suico Soriano is a writer, videomaker and independent curator. She is a recipient of the 2000 PEN Center USA West Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellowship and her poems have appeared in Philippines Free Press, Solidarity Journal, Disorient Journal, Flippin’: Filipinos on America (AAWW), Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers (Aunt Lute) and Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry (Rattapallax Press). Her video Second Sky has been screened at the 2002 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film & Video Festival, the 2002 Cinemanila International Film Festival and the 2003 San Diego Asian Film Festival.

[ Frederick ]

After living two years in the new country, my brother took to drinking to find “spirits.” He keeps to 7 bottles of beer every afternoon and at 5 p.m., gets in his car, listens to Sinatra and heads towards downtown L.A. He knows that at a precisely calculated driving speed, the blur of trees and railroad tracks along San Fernando Boulevard and Avenue 19 outside his car window will remind him of “home.” A blur resembling the busy streets of Reposo and Kalayaan, quiet now that the night ladies have found their customers for the evening and all that is left are quiet roads with stunted, jeepney exhaust blackened trees lining the narrow sidewalks.

He knows that at just the right volume, his tape of 40’s Sinatra will sound like it did years back in his father’s automobile, on their way home from a weekly visit with uncles and cousins and then remember that on certain stoplights, his father would give away a few centavos to make a young beggar girl pressing her mother or grandmother’s face on the car window, go away.

He knows at just the right time of day, the golden hour when the sun falls on the buildings just right will make him remember how once again to feel whole, like how he used to be so long ago. He knows to stare beyond the tall, shiny buildings and put on his dark glasses because with just the right mix of shading, his eyes and spectacles can make the horizon glow in the same color of Manila smog and sky. This same color he saw for 16 years in the back window of our father’s rented house before supper time.

Los Angeles is for him a city of memory where colors intensify and the small Makati creeks he used to play in become vast oceans he knows he will never return to.

* * *

Michelle Macaraeg Bautista is an Oakland, CA native. Her work has been published in Muse Apprentice Guild, TMP Poetry, and anthologized in Babaylan (Aunt Lute, 2000) and Going Home to a Landscape (Calyx 2003). She fixes computers by day and teaches the Filipino martial art of kali by night and writes a poem or two sometime in between.

[ The Ferry ]

Prologue

The ferry,
anxious,
cuts through waves
a straight line to shore.
40 minute ride.
The slumbering dragon
exhales a misty blanket
where grandmother rests her head.
While the spirit of the deer
watch from
dense forests
trespassers disembark.
This island of angels is not as merciful as it would seem.
There are ghosts here.
They run with the deer,
a memory etched in
dilapidated buildings.

Ayala cove, China cove
fumigation/immigration station
1910-1940

Remove disease and pestilence.
The Red Tide.
The Asian Invasion.
carbolic soap, steam, sulfur dioxide, cyanide
It is not what you bring that kills you
when the body is fresh, the soul is dying.
Quarantine.

I. Paper covers rock (of family blood lines)

En(ter)(ror)Gate
Average stay: 14 days
Longest stay: 2 years
numbers in lies, lies in numbers
How many windows in your home?
Count the steps to your door.
Can you smell freedom waft in on the breeze?
What is your grandfather’s name?
how many brothers did your father have?
What did your town look like?
Can you see the prison isle from here?

Tell them lies disowning
family and country in one breath.

She is my mother, not my aunt.
He is my son, not my neighbor.
I came to be a prisoner.
Liars will be sent back.

Four walls, Four corners
bad luck — like death like coffins
300 men in this room,
80 women not including children in another
stacked four high
guard towers, barbed wire
Can you see the prison isle from here?
Carve truth leaving your indelible marks
Warnings on the walls.

Stories.
Testimonies.
Confessions.
Hopes.
Dreams.

Painted
over and
over by
layers and
layers of
poison.

Do not touch the walls.

I must hear what the ghosts have to say.

“In the bathrooms, we covered our heads with paper bags. The only privacy to our shame. We never went alone. There was once a young woman here to meet her groom. She did not think they believed her story. One day, she put on the wedding dress she had brought and hung herself in the shower stall.”

II. Scissors slice paper (names).

You meet me on the steps.
Do not enter. Keep out.
Building is dangerous. I must.
You beg me not to enter, but I proceed.
The weight of your presence growing with
my deepening breath. Hear what. I
feel your heart pounding.
Each step the burden mounts.
This building was once a hospital
to cure the sickness we were. the ghosts.
Empty rooms layered in dust and chipped paint.
have to say. You watch me look into the history of
each window frame and doorway.
You speak truth through cobwebbed emptiness
the eyes of the deer glimmer
in the mountain’s shadow.

Paul Chow chained himself
to the barracks.
History will not be a prop for
Hollywood’s muses.

Tie yourself to history to save your future.

“You will not blow up this building!
You will not blow up my parents!
You will not blow up me!”

Tethered to walls that
creak from the witness of sorrow.

III. Rock breaks scissors.

I cringe in the corner
sweep my hand over the walls
press my body into
leaded layers.
I am safe here.
I lick the walls
till my tongue coats white
feed an insatiable appetite
pick and pull at the chips.
I must hear what the ghosts have to say.
Scrape away the layers flaking flecks
til splinters penetrate
underneath my fingernails,
an ancient form of torture.
I lick the walls
till my tongue bleeds
an indelible red ink
and write my own
on the walls.

Epilogue.

Shadows grow long
the ferry blows last call.
The bell tolls echoing across the bay.
Gold Mountain crumbles
and the deer
run ahead
of the landsliding
rock.

2000.11

* * *

Joseph O. Legaspi was born in the Philippines, and raised there and in Los Angeles where he immigrated with his family when he was twelve. He holds degrees from Loyola Marymount University and the Creative Writing Program at New York University. Currently, he lives in New York City and works at Columbia University. His poems have appeared in numerous journals, recently in the North American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Puerto Del Sol, Poet Lore, The Literary Review, and Titling the Continent, an anthology of Southeast Asian literature. A recipient of a 2001 poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), he is one of the founding members of Kundiman, a non-profit organization serving Asian American poets.

[ The Kisser's Handbook ]

A peck is a red poppy.
Several is a bird feeding on your hand.

The first kiss is the customary rose given,
a bouquet received by two.

On the right side of her mouth, she is your mother.
On the left side, she’s the sister you never had.

A simmering moist kiss is cherry pie.

Awkward and dry is love;

If delicate yet firm, a kiss is Ophelia’s resuscitation from drowning;
Hurried and open-mouthed, moths flutter out of her body.

A kiss that glides smoothly has the pleasant lightness of tea.
If it smudges, prepare yourself for children.

A kiss that roams the curving of the lips,
the tongue still tracing the slopes
even without her near is a poet’s muse.

When bitten on the lower lip — I am your peach –
and if she is left there biting, dangling, she’ll burn the tree.

When she’s sucking your lips as if through a straw
she wants you in her.

Never quite touching, lips bridged
by warm clouds of breath, speak in recitation:
Because I am the ocean in which she cannot swim,
my lover turned into the sea,

Or, cradle her in the cushions of your lips
and let her sleep, lovingly, in the pink.