Bird Eating Bird Read online

  Bird Eating Bird

  Poems

  Kristin Naca

  In memory of beloved teacher and mentor, Carl Mills

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Speaking English Is Like

  Todavía no

  Not Yet

  “Gavilán o Paloma”

  Uses for Spanish in Pittsburgh

  Ode to Glass

  Baptism

  One Foot

  Grocery Shopping with My Girlfriend Who Is Not Asian

  Language Poetry / Grandma’s English

  Tres Mujeres

  Las Meninas / The Maids of Honor

  Becoming

  Falling, Calle Orizaba

  What I Don’t Tell My Children About the Philippines

  Glove

  Revenant Gladness

  Corazón como un reloj

  Heart Like a Clock

  Rear Window

  House

  Manejar, I-80 Nebraska

  Driving, I-80 Nebraska

  Witness

  The Adoration at El Montan Motor Lodge

  While Watching Dallas, My Filipina Auntie Grooms Me for Work at the Massage Parlor

  Seguir

  Seguir: To Follow, Keep On, Continue

  In the Time of the Caterpillars

  Hablar español sigue así

  Speaking Spanish Is Like

  In Mexico City

  Catching Cardinals

  Notes

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  The National Poetry Series was established in 1978 to ensure the publication of five poetry books annually through five participating publishers. Publication is funded by the Lannan Foundation; Stephen Graham; Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation; Glenn and Renee Schaeffer, Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation; and Charles B. Wright III.

  2008 Open Competition Winners

  Anna Journey of Houston, Texas, If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting

  Chosen by Thomas Lux, to be published by University of Georgia Press

  Douglas Kearney of Van Nuys, California, The Black Automaton

  Chosen by Catherine Wagner, to be published by Fence Books

  Adrian Matejka of Edwardsville, Illinois, Mixology

  Chosen by Kevin Young, to be published by Penguin Books

  Kristin Naca of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bird Eating Bird

  Chosen by Yusef Komunyakaa for the National Poetry Series MTVU Prize, to be published by Harper Perennial

  Sarah O’Brien of Brookfield, Ohio, catch light

  Chosen by David Shapiro, to be published by Coffee House Press

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The generosity of so many enabled me to complete this collection. I owe the greatest debt to my family: Christian and Lisa, Michael, Rosalin, Puring, Ralph and Mary. And my family: Julianne McAdoo, Nikki Ono, Bill and Alejandro Sanchez, Roger Solis, Arturo Madrid and Antonia Castañeda, Omar Rodríguez and Verónica Prida, my Elena, Jim Clawson, Vicente Lozano, Carla Trujillo and Leslie Larson, Anel Flores, Chris Cuomo and Karen Schlanger, Erin Flanagan, Maxine Leckie, Derek Walker, Chris Byrne, Leah and Macauley Devun, Stacey Berry and Andre Jordan, Barbara Banfield, Kate Nelson, Padrino, Madrina, and the Macondistas.

  Thanks to many professors and writing teachers who responded to my work with generosity. Special thanks goes to my committee members at University of Pittsburgh and University of Nebraska. For their wisdom and unflinching belief, thank you, Sandra Cisneros and Hilda Raz.

  To my friends who wore down their fingernails against my drafts: Dina Rhoden, Nancy Krygowski, Heather Green, Mathias Svalina, Jehanne Dubrow, Lois Williams, Jan Beatty, Ellen Placey Wadey, Jeff Oaks, Chingbee Cruz, Renato Rosaldo, Diana Delgado, Marcia Ochoa, Nick Carbó, Eileen Tabios, Hadara Bar-Nadav, and Chuck Rybak. For all their timely advice: John Marshall and Christine Deavel of Open Books. Thank you, Joy, for your horses.

  Special thanks to María L. Lorenzo, at University of Nebraska, whose generous feedback and encouragement made my writing poems in Spanish possible. Thanks to Hedgebrook, and UN-L, for providing fellowships and time to write. Thanks to my colleagues at Macalester College. Thanks to painter Heather Hagle for her friendship and vision. And thanks to the National Poetry Series for the support of my work, Michael Signorelli at Harper Perennial for his enthusiasm, Yusef Komunyakaa, and everyone at MTV for giving me “My Shot with Yusef Komunyakaa.”

  These poems originally appeared in the following venues:

  5AM: “While Watching Dallas, My Auntie Grooms Me for Work at the Massage Parlor”

  THE ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN JOURNAL: “Grocery Shopping with my Girlfriend Who Is Not Asian”

  THE CINCINNATI REVIEW: “Heart Like a Clock”

  CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW: “Uses for Spanish in Pittsburgh”

  HARPUR PALATE: “Baptism,” “In the Time of the Caterpillars”

  INDIANA REVIEW: “Todavía no,” “Not Yet”

  THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW: “What I Don’t Tell My Children about the Philippines”

  OCHO: THE MiPOesias PRINT JOURNAL COMPANION: “Speaking English Is Like,” “Glove,” “Adoration at El Montan”

  PINOY POETICS: A COLLECTION OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS ON FILIPINO AND FILIPINO AMERICAN POETICS: “Language Poetry / Grandma’s English”

  OCTOPUS: “House”

  PRAIRIE SCHOONER: “Ode to Glass,” “One Foot,” “Las Meninas / The Maids of Honor,” “Rear Window,” “Witness”

  RIO GRANDE REVIEW: “Speaking Spanish Goes Like This”

  RIO GRANDE REVIEW ONLINE: “Catching Cardinals”

  Her Spanish sounds like sunlight drying a wet shirt.

  And in the process, I’ve grown fond of her.

  She’s delicadeza, a word that names her nature.

  Whose dream deepens in the rain? Whose hair is lilacs?

  —Eugene Gloria

  SPEAKING ENGLISH IS LIKE

  Brown and beige and blonde tiles set in panels of tile across the bathroom floor.

  Wakes curled into the pavement by traffic, the asphalt a slow, gray tide.

  A loose floorboard hiding the gouges chunked out of the floor.

  Tawny red curtains hamstrung in the quick, morning light.

  Her body oils like sage in a shirt, in the bed sheets.

  Pigeons on a line and in the gutters.

  The staple that misfires and jams the hammer.

  The tender, black wick at the top of a candle’s waxy lip.

  The lonely woman secretly dying her curtains red at the Laundry Factory.

  The purple and purple-blue berry sacks tethered to a blackberry rind.

  Branches lolled by the weight of voluminous, tender sacks.

  The path along the lake lit up with the pitch of purple stars.

  Mouthfuls of lavender at the height of August.

  Her lips, red gathering in the creases when she puckers.

  Endings that are dirty tricks and also feathers.

  Red water out the pipes, teeming from the rusty gutters.

  The curtain flicker in the leafy, August breeze.

  The ghostly cu-cu echoing through the purple night, under stars.

  TODAVÍA NO

  Los pedazos de la lengua quedan tan gordos y abultados como flores.

  Dime, árbol. Son los que están allá solamente ramas desnudas y alguna corteza.

  Todavía no, no hay palabras para hacer capas de piel sobre la primavera.

  El color verde se difumina sin leaves.

  El único pájaro que aterriza allí es el halcón.

  En el espejo, el reflejo de su pelo es castañas labradas.

  Las venas de la cala están labradas con paredes. No, piedras. N
o, pérdidas.

  Mientras tanto, tus manos están hechas de nudillos y hechas de piel.

  En la ventana, el cristal se superpone al árbol desnudo afuera.

  Sin fingernails, solamente clavos. Los dedos-garras. Los dedos-lanzas, dice ella.

  La ropa en la cama está limpia y suelta.

  La mujer en la cama espera no morir mientras duerme…despierta…despierta.

  El halcón la aguada en el árbol desnudo, más allá de la ventana, más allá de los muros.

  La canción del pájaro superpone a la noche despejada, la deja despierta.

  Todavía no, todas las canciones que canta, le da de comer al halcón.

  Todas las noches que espera ella, le da de comer a la muerte.

  NOT YET

  The nubs of the tongue sit fat and bulky as flowers.

  Say, tree. What’s there but bare branches and some bark.

  No words for putting layers of skin on spring yet.

  Green glows loose without its leaves.

  The only bird that lands there is the falcon.

  In the mirror, the reflection of her hair is carved chestnuts.

  The veins of the creek encrusted with walls. No, stones. No, losing.

  Meanwhile your hands are made of knuckles and made of skin.

  In the window, glass overlaps the naked tree outside.

  No fingernails, just the nails. Finger-claws. Finger-swords, she says.

  The laundry on the bed is clean and limp.

  The woman in her bed hopes she doesn’t die in her sleep…wake up…wake up.

  The falcon waits for her in the naked tree, beyond the window, beyond the walls.

  The small bird’s song overlaps the clear night, keeps her from her sleep.

  Still, every song he sings, he’s food for the falcon.

  Every night she waits, she’s food for death.

  “GAVILÁN O PALOMA”

  —Mexico City

  Once a bird pecked her lover’s hand

  with such sincerity that she lost

  hold of the seeds she secretly tossed,

  to keep all the birds at her command.

  No dejabas de mirar, you sang me,

  last night, estabas sola completamente

  bella y sensual, and the notes stirred

  loose feather dust from your chest.

  you didn’t stop staring

  you alone were completely

  beautiful and sensual

  When you exhaled, your silhouette

  dissolved, reddening the D. F. dusk.

  Vibrato frayed your veil: how you fled

  one city, but betrayal beckoned you;

  confess, how lovers nest in branches

  of your collarbones while you sleep.

  Entre tus brazos caí…consumed

  by your song’s, lonesome downbeat.

  How I fell into your arms

  Paloma,

  I know some days begin with birds.

  Nights we suffer from too few songs.

  How the chorus of a woman’s lips delays

  Sorrows that each heartbeat prolongs.

  Amiga,

  Tell me how you’re leaning, before

  sunlight bathes the city in pink spells.

  Will your voice deliver me morning?

  Or, will the caroling street-vendors bells?

  USES FOR SPANISH IN PITTSBURGH

  What use is there for describing

  Bloomfield’s hard-sloping rooftops this way?

  Or that the church steeples beam upward, inexpertly

  toward God. What difference does it make

  to say, the chimney pipes peel their red skins,

  or las pieles rojas, exposing tough steel underneath.

  What good, then, for Spanish,

  its parity of consonants and vowels—

  vowels like a window to the throat,

  breath chiming through the vocal chords.

  And what good is singing to describe

  this barrio’s version of the shortened sky,

  el cielo cortado—power lines crisscrossing

  so high, that blue only teases through them.

  And what for fog la niebla arrastra,

  creeping down las calles inmóviles

  before the bank and grocery store open.

  Y por la zapatería on Liberty Avenue,

  a lady’s antique boot for a street sign.

  And by the shoemaker’s

  What use to remember in any language

  my father was a Puerto Rican shoe salesman.

  From his mouth dangled a ropy, ashy cigarette.

  He spoke good English and knew when to smile.

  fishing nets

  With his strong fingers he’d knot shoes like redes,

  knew three kinds of knots so lady customers

  could buy the shoes they loved to look at

  but really shouldn’t have worn.

  At home, Dad kept his lengua íntima

  to himself. His Spanish not for children,

  only older relatives who forced him to speak,

  reminded, Spanish means there’s another person

  inside you. All beauty, he’d argue, no power in it.

  Still, I remember, he spoke a hushed Spanish

  to customers who struggled in English, the ones

  he pitied for having no language to live on.

  So many years gone, what use to invent

  or question him in Pittsburgh? The educated one,

  why would I want my clumsy Spanish to stray

  from the pages of books outward? My tongue,

  he’d think so untrue and inarticulate. Each word

  having no past in it. What then? Speaking Spanish

  to make them better times or Pittsburgh

  a better place. En vez de regresar la dura realidad

  del pasado. And then, if I choose to speak like this

  who will listen?

  Instead of returning

  to the hard reality

  of the past

  ODE TO GLASS

  After its lip

  the bottle flares out

  like the A-line of

  a girl’s skirt

  when she twirls

  at recess.

  On the descent

  the company’s crest—

  one red and one blue

  crescent about to

  clasp together

  into a globe

  but between

  them, the name

  of the soda sits

  in bold, white letters.

  Below

  the slogan

  the tiny print:

  contenido neto 355 ml,

  and hecho en México,

  in perfectly

  executed paint.

  Partway down

  the bottle corners

  into a barrel-shape,

  the swiveled glass,

  the same as stripes

  of a barber’s pole, forces

  the eye to follow

  and twist along its

  blurred contours,

  the way skin blurs

  the contours of

  an arm so you

  slow down into

  the elbow’s nook.

  And how much

  like skin the peach

  and brown and blue

  reflections inside

  the glass lend it

  dimension while outside

  the surface and shape

  are seamless, but

  for some stitching

  underneath, a zipper

  dialed around the

  bottle’s base to

  serve as feet.

  And where

  the glass corners

  from cone to barrel

  a ring carved from

  the bottles being

  packed too close

  and rubbing together

  in their crates.

  Scars that

&nbs
p; keep dry and

  soft as silk, even as

  the glass beads, and

  you start to trace

  the droplets back

  over the powder,

  and still dry after

  you’ve swabbed up

  the condensation

  and your fingers

  have gone clumsy

  from the bottle’s

  brittle sweat.

  When the bottle’s

  this cold, the swivels

  of glass are charged,

  icy bulbs that steal

  heat from the nubs

  of your fingertips,

  so you rub them

  to your forehead

  and feel nothing

  but your own heat

  swirl back and forth

  from your head

  to your hand.

  Each time you drink—

  the bubbles rising up

  through the sweet,

  brown liquid, stirring

  your nose, then lips—

  how easily details

  of time slip away and

  you’re seven-years-old

  again drinking Pepsi

  at the sari-sari store

  next to Uncle Ulpe’s

  house in Manila. And

  you guzzle it down.