10/5/2017 Poetry By Iris OrpiWoman, Ground Zero Her face reminded me of a parachute that opened too late. A confusion of color crumpled in mid-flight, a near-fatal crash. Bruised lips, swollen jaw, red stains where the whites of her eyes should be. I suppose there was so much more that the deep soul brown of her skin was concealing. The most scathing moments leading to this dawn wrote apocalyptic scriptures on her blood as she walked under the E.R. hallway’s fluorescent light. She flickered, and I half expected her heart to disengage from her body any minute. But she crossed the threshold biting back the winter cold like her will had overridden her senses and the switch had failed, of when she was supposed to realize it was safe to put her guard down. Like when a cornered innocence had somehow clawed a path away from the corner, but isn’t quite sure, and still sees the image of its would-have-been captor everywhere it looked. It was just hours ago when the world flipped on her and three years’ worth of trust had added up to less than nothing: the strength of his arms on which she had lain her head to dream had short-circuited with the fury in his fists and didn’t care where they landed. Her will was fluid, now and leaking from the air around her as she made her way to where I stood, ready to give her an embrace which I feared would be empty, unsure of which hurt I should first be speaking to. Which was lightning, and which was thunder? Was it the jagged ache swinging like a pendulum inside her flesh, that fell first, followed by the acid blast of being betrayed, or the other way around? Did they happen within seconds of each other, like a volley of bullets from the same gun, ripping apart what used to be so sacred? I put up my arms, but only to relieve her tired hands of the sheaf of papers, CAT Scan results and medical certificates that were quite possibly the only thing solid on her whole person. I promised to keep them safe until I could take her to the police station in the morning to file them as evidence. I looked at her instead, at the shape of the survival she was keeping upright with sheer will. It was fueled, and pure; but how close to breaking, I wasn't so sure. Outcast of my Own Skin The loneliness sometimes it burns like consciousness entering a desert like raw skin right before you bleed like hunger after a free fall through emptiness and a thousand eyes watching listening for the unconfessed sin to shatter and cover the sky in glass the last pieces trying to embrace the unforgiving sun it’s not that I’ve coveted and survived a deep blue negotiation it’s that I’ve never really arrived it’s not that I came, but that I left with a plan to love but without a plan to rest my head, somewhere or am I allowed to talk about the gray parts of the choices I’ve made? my convictions are plucked cold feathers and my solitude has swollen feet the world parades its many hearts past me and all the details are a clamorous blur with a foreign accent and deliberate scars too beautiful to understand for one so weary With your Permission I’m sorting through the voices in my head. Some belong to me and some belong to those who would have me believe free will is treacherous and the price for change is always too high, indistinct echoes of hate in the halls of the house where my childhood was drawn in crayon and my growth was in spite of chains I am tired of respect on a one-way street and I will not spend my life dragging my heavy heart where the sun cowers before the gray and any work on my identity can be undone by something you said, where I can’t escape the pain of your disapproval, how it festers around the joy I try so hard to keep above the murky waters of your stereotypes, your fear of gossip destroying you more than gossip and facing the world is so difficult when I can’t face you with pride and my vain wishes of belonging here have handicapped me, I who have become strong on my own, I who am free-- but only outside of this place I called home So I’ll put a geographical distance between my love and your poison, you who would not be silent you who would stalk me with names and judgement along the corridors of all the choices I’ve made and all the truths under my feet because I am your daughter and I will not break your heart but nor will I turn the other cheek and pay tariffs on what bliss I crafted with my bare hands and the only kind of beauty I could believe in, the little of it that’s left untouched by you Unfinished Epitaph So you have dragged my name through the mud and pillaged my peace of mind. So you have called all my actions into question and labeled them with scarlet letters. So you have twisted my words and shamed me into silence. So you have turned my very faith upside down and called my courage a crime. You tore the clothes off my back. The lovely colors they were, I still see them; they were not yours, no matter how many dotted lines you forced me to sign. And even then, you debased the raw nobility of my nakedness. You then released me into the wild where I had been before. I ran back, trembling, into the arms of the sun. I cleared my vision by weeping. I strengthened my steps again by walking and by standing still. Wind songs and bird calls reminded me of love. I studied the moon. The bared textures of life finally let me sleep. For the first time in years, I could take my sweet time. I solemnly dug up my truths and my purpose from under the decaying leaves and commenced rubbing off the dirt with my fingers. And then you sent your hounds after me. Just Another Fallen Leaf The days are angry in their inscrutable silence. I’ve counted the times they have raised their voice, trying to be heard over the tedium of makeshift meaning and bouts of purpose that never quite make it to dusk. All they long to be is a river that rages uninterrupted. This one lies at my feet like the ones before it, too many to count, with heaving breaths, wrestled to the ground by the towering finality of the no choice, the choke hold of the single path. Devoid of visions. Its arms do not flail, but all the life left in its blood is seething and rebellious and consumed by a night that has been torn and pulled inside out. ![]() Bio: Iris Orpi is a Filipina writer living in Chicago, IL. She is the author of the novel The Espresso Effect (2010) and two books of compiled poems, Cognac for the Soul (2012) and Beautiful Fever (2012). Her work has appeared in over two dozen print and online publications around Asia, North America, and Europe. She was an Honorable Mention for the Contemporary American Poetry Prize, given by Chicago Poetry Press, in 2014. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2024
Categories |