Poems of Carlomar Arcangel Daoana, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta & Allan Justo Pastrana

Acknowledgements Carlomar Arcangel Daoana: Some of the poems have been previously
published in the author’s collection, Loose Tongue: Poems 2001-2013 (UST Publishing House,
2014); and in Likhaan 8:The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature and Tomas: The Journal
of UST Center for Creative Writing and Literary Studies. Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta: Some of
these poems saw prior publication in Katigbak-Lacuesta’s The Proxy Eros (Anvil Publishing
Inc., 2008), and Burning Houses (UST Publishing House 2013). Allan Pastrana: Some of the
poems were originally published in Pastrana’s first book, Body Haul (Manila, University of
Sto.Tomas Publishing House, 2011).

Poems of Carlomar Arcangel Daoana, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta & Allan Justo Pastrana
Asia Pacific Poetry Series 8

First published 2015 by Vagabond Press
PO Box 958 Newtown NSW 2042 Australia
www.vagabondpress.net

Dinah Roma, Carlomar Arcangel Daoana Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta
Allan Justo Pastrana© 2015.

Cover image © Mark Andy Garcia, 2014,“Be Ye Steadfast”. Oil on canvas.
Courtesy of the artist (www.markandygarcia.com) and West Gallery (www.westgallery.org).

Designed and typeset by Michael Brennan
in 10/13 Bembo

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. The information and views set
out in this book are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the
publisher.

ISBN 978-1-922181-60-2

Poems of Carlomar Arcangel Daoana,
Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta
& Allan Justo Pastrana

Edited and introduced by
Dinah Roma

Vagabond Press|Asia Pacific Poetry Series

3

CONTENTS

Introduction by Dinah Roma .... 7

Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
Self-Help .... 15
The English Channel .... 17
The Infidel in the Kitchen .... 19
On my way to the Suite Vollard .... 21
Manor Event .... 23
Sainsbury Wing .... 26
Cold District .... 28
Mountain Province .... 30
A Theory of Clouds .... 32
The Fog .... 34
Upriver .... 38
House Near a Lake .... 40
Song .... 41
Archipelagic Doctrine of the End of the World .... 43

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta
As Far as Cho-Fu-Sa .... 53
America Is In the Sweetheart .... 54
We,Won’t, Be,Tending, Gardens, .... 56
Portrait of Virginia Grasey .... 58
Portrait of Ms.Anne Solesby .... 59
Playa de Kamakura .... 60
The Parable of the Sparrow .... 61
When The Heart Flies from its Place:Accompanying Notes
to the poem by Eric Gamalinda .... 62
Gilding .... 63
Landscape .... 65
John Fante Observes Carlos Bulosan .... 66
Burning Houses .... 68
Tampuhan .... 70
Fable of the Southern Wives .... 71

Women Talking .... 72
Borealis .... 74
The Telling .... 76
Here Is the Chisel and Here Is the Mallet .... 77
Snapshot .... 78
Puzzle .... 79
The Style is Laughter .... 81
Composure:Accompanying Notes To If The One I’ve

Waited For by Izumi Shikibu .... 82
Boxes .... 84
Sinking Cities .... 85
Spaces We Leave Empty .... 86
The Half of It .... 88

Allan Pastrana
Pornography .... 91
And besides, the monsoon .... 93
If to measure the brief length of the plane .... 94
Island .... 95
A colony .... 97
The Nature of Place .... 98
That in another life this .... 100
The Meaning of Orange .... 103
thus, travel; this per square-inch .... 104
When the middle is in question, partly .... 106
History .... 108
Allegory of the Red Blossom .... 112
Allegory of the White Handkerchief .... 113
A stone’s throw indicates a state .... 114
Trap .... 115
What always gets thrown across the table over dinner .... 118
Inner Life .... 119

About the authors .... 122

5

CARLOMAR ARCANGEL DAOANA

13

Self-Help

Begin with a bet on doubt, otherwise clarity.
Proceed on a description of a real thing—
Either fragrant, globular or darting. If not,
A darling, the singular face to last a lifetime,

Whose one true gesture is the way he puffs
Cigarette-smoke skyward. Momentarily,
Forget about stars, their coal, coal hearts,
The spheres, paintings that you have not

Personally seen. If it can’t be helped, a scene,
The landscape hopefully more complex
Than the last time: gable roofs, arcades,
A throng of bees. Invoke the insects

& the algae, the quartz & the cabbage.
If this will not yet suffice, civilizations,
Lost or emerging.The past is not the enemy,
It’s always with us, informing cities

Of ruins, the impermanence of empires.
Do as the Romans do. Go easy on myths
Which are tricky as funhouse mirrors. Better
Prepare with a keyhole, a submarine window,

A small clue that you will follow through.
See the potential in domesticity: two voices
Unloading their heartbreak in a room,
For the first time unjudging, may say

Something precious about human nature
Though sometimes I doubt it. Specify

15

If it’s rain, hail or sleet. Murders and wars
Are not wholesale commodities unless epic.
Insinuate the use of money, credit cards,
Postage stamps.Allow occasional carelessness
With an image: an oak tree in autumn
Need not lay down its irresistible silk.
Seasons are okay, not weather if used as a stage.
Music, let it set the pace. Or the movement
Of something wounded staggering across
The space. If at a crossroad between
Plain speech & the rose, always choose
The elegant ghost. Revise to your art’s desire.
If the poem failed, there’s still your life waiting
To be unshucked: a pearl of grit & prize.

16

The English Channel

I.
The requisite, of course, is to look at the sea’s gray slate,
To calibrate vision—just so—to accommodate the particulars of light
That by now are transfusing the atmosphere with a shot
Of tangerine, incarnadine and a burn of green at the sky’s edge—
Not to compare and contrast the vista with all the previously felt
Remembrances but to take them all in, deliberate conjugations
Of matter creating such fantabulous tricks, without
Any help or worry from outside force, brutal in their thanklessness
That by now, even the waves lashing at the shingle beach
(Each pebble a round echo of the initial stirring) are construed
As simply evocations of a subterranean machinery and
The remnant surf scattering tatters of lace on the shore
As merely air captured by salt water.What we hear then
Is unhusked from the terror it inspires, scattering among
The fishermen’s quarters painted in black, the cliff
And its funicular, now murmuring on the seaside estate
Of East Sussex, its vernacular lost among the pelican cries.

II.
Surely, no ocean can be seen for the first time.What varies
Is merely vantage point, say five o’clock in the afternoon
This early autumn, near the unfinished dock, the parking lot,
At the shortest possible distance between France and England.
As the English Channel spills its wild cadence, packing
Its every iamb with evil force, I simultaneously see and hear
All the other bodies of water seen and heard in Pagudpod,
Palawan, Panglao which inflect this vision with their motions
And insinuations, tinkering with the coloring of the sea,
Draining away the novelty until at last, this is déjà vu
With a reference more pivotal than a dream, the breath
Already modulated into normal frequency and the eyes,

17

Previously blameless in the absence of intent, now scour
The roots of the waves with hard-fast familiarity, tipping
The sun’s grandiose ink across the diminished gray,
Chastised by the absence of dangerous cargoes and ships,
Reduced only to this: a blank, unserviceable sheet.

III.
And yet, this is the same sea that madly summons language
On my part, asking to be reconstituted into noble parts,
Not in its entirety when at last it is almost irrelevant
In its billions-of-years eternity, rolling and rolling
Not knowing when to stop, but in this particular slice
Of the northern hemisphere, stilled as it were like a bolt
Of intensity in my mind, dying into a syllable from which
It will rise and tremble in its newfound form: aglitter. Sadly,
It is I who have approached the sea, asking for its blessing.
It has nothing to do with me except to release its archetype,
Prove its immense power beyond doubt. I see what I want
To see, find what I want to find, and this is because
I am helpless against the sea’s durability, its pebbles
That will survive longer than all the dialects enlivened
By our throats.The sea inside me will not spill into
The English Channel funneling into the Atlantic and I am
Looking for the right word for this particular loneliness.

18

MOOKIE KATIGBAK-LACUESTA

51

As Far as Cho-Fu-Sa

“If you are coming down the narrows of the river Kiang,
Let me know beforehand and I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-Fu-Sa.” –Ezra Pound

What I am ever is this: composure of stone.
Spare weather, visiting the garden, small as the hours
I keep watch by. Beyond this wall

must be better weathers.This claw of stars
must constellate somewhere into a bear,
else names would lie.

Since winter’s thaws, no script from you
save this: I travel the river and follow
the white gulls.

Husband. See me walking the dusty pass
where loom our prior lives?
Here the years pass that I enshrine

within these walls, sparing nothing
from the ardors of my stare: blue plums
paired butterflies repeat you

in a walled world. I tell myself
to clear the moss, mend the gate
so long unswayed and caked with dirt

but nothing moves. Somewhere
you are actual. Happen to me there.

53

America Is In the Sweetheart

In the dance halls of California, a Filipino
migrant worker could buy dime-a-dance tickets to dance
with a taxi dancer.These were called Sweetheart tickets.

The roads that began in the fields of Binalonan
End here tonight in the dance halls of Stockton.

The roads through Moxee and Zillah, and Pasco,
End here tonight in the dance halls of Stockton.

I’ve crossed the heart-shaped valleys
In freight trains with Claro and Paez;

Julio carved his name on an orange tree
We hid behind, when boys no more than five

Struck us with rubble and stones. But all those roads
End here tonight in the dance halls of Stockton.

I am going to dance with Sally,Virginia and Mary
For ten cents a ticket and three minutes a dance.

I am going to dance with Sally,Virginia and Mary
For ten cents a minute, three tickets a dance.

They’ll say, call me darling in your local
tongue, turning their eyes to the coil

on the floor: I’ll say mahal.
Then we’ll dance to a number as short as a swoon:

It’s, it’s only a paper moon—

54

They’ll give me the slip to something
mid-tempo, slow by slow inch so I won’t know
what hit me. I know the drill: the glint
in my eye, the beautiful lie in my arms.
All the cold, terrible sweethearts.

All the cold embezzlers of hearts.
Note: The last line of the poem alludes to the book Embezzlers of
Hearts by David Robinson.

55

We, Won’t, Be, Tending, Gardens,

Watch, scant, grow, lush, won’t, turn, the, earth
for bulb, or root, I’ve, longed, to, say,

peppermint,
and,
thyme,
juice, a, tomato, with, my, teeth,

No, we, won’t, be, tending, gardens, kiss,
A, wet, deep, for, what, might, grow, under,

dark,
and,
succulent,
As, long, promises, the, orchids,

we, overlove, are, deep, in, water, do, not,
aspire, they, are, trying, to, tell, us, something,

Trust,
Says, the, sprig,
And, Trust,
says, the, spray, and, I, fear, the, long, gather.

I, nestle, my, palm, on, a, groove, I’ve, no,
time, for, or, roots, to, spare, I, mark,

my, air,
with, dark,
matter,
kiss, what won’t, be, sown,

or, held, to, light, I’ll, hate, my, scorn, and,
swear, a, tender, year,
There,
now,

56

you, say, there, there,
toeing, dirt, over, the, groove,
Tending, other, far, gardens.

57

ALLAN PASTRANA

.

89

Pornography

So be it—the moment I want,
when I say, begin saying it

that all may be locutionary,
rather tempting as in awe, but O

that is shaped less when I
speak than “if I’d so often thought

about you in the past” is by far
an awful lot of work, you remember?

And what of an arm bent, legs—part yours and
mine lonely on the edge of my seat, this

ledge and that I am near and coming, and coming
is a short note of rescue. Not about pleasure.

If then I hold an image of Oh lad
with the auburn—

Oh lady with the flaxen hair, lips
forming into a kiss, nein, Kuss and will you know

from a deep sleep I have awakened? That night
among sheets, whilst alone, there might be a face

all the better to be close by, yours. If a shroud
to cover you with though, I care to see traces

of that mug (shoot, you will) or at least the idea
flickering, flimsy now-here-then-gone, one way

91

to the crux which is essence and sweat altogether,
to have arrived here soonest: some middle.

I didn’t mean to cause alarm, for it to get off, not
to mean, either “Get off that train right this minute

and will follow.” Because alighting
ride of my life can be love (first sight, be blind)

will you marry—? Death do us part without
time frames is what the woman, kneeling,

believes in before her savior, saving a face and might
I keep it (as imprint, memory) to recall thus:

If a shroud…to the crux… Finally, lust.

That I could have sworn not to drop a word
(its referent, next) like that.That I drop it.

And besides, the monsoon
the latticework, the steel mattings fencing
off just about any mound, the hedges growing
beyond the right height, the mess also
the mesh, pitscale, pig-
weed, each stump strong, holding ground
the leaf-strewn nettings of snail
pens, the peat moss, the bounds
of thicket, murk, the eye—
might take a color just as cold, yet still
there aren’t enough stones here to turn
over, or build a house, and the earth
furrowed, each ramshackle roundabout
the hen, fodder, the corrugated tin
to sheathe, to hide, to hold something dear
as near, to keep
the reed, to sing, and the manyfold whims
of the thrush, the wanton thatch, to squint
and burn the rest, days after, and follow

93

If to measure the brief length of the plane

is what you meant by keeping still—I am
because, it is
the tabs we keep on the dead—end, it will
for sure, and always to mark: this way
upstream—and where
from post
to post the direction, here is
one for where they grow the brightest
of pits, and there
the blank chambers, the lichen blooms
eternal, and rest
is yet to haul us in—seven by three
by two and six-feet true
but now, the new
plan to keep off the plains
is, perchance, the road wide
and long it takes to cross
the arms and worlds to meet, and name
such and such, no more than
what a beam requires, or a cot
when all we have past the aqueducts
the networks, to lead again
and then to this—higher ground
tundra mirabilis, limit’s crest
tempo spatium and ever
the winding route the room
leaves in its wake, for better
or otherwise, when one foot gets close enough
to the hole that clips it.

94