“Waiting Ghazal,” “Beauty Talk” & “The Other End of ‘Have You Eaten’”
→ PUBLISHED IN ISSUE NO. 34: SPRING/SUMMER 2025
Waiting Ghazal
Once, you told me about two kinds of time.
Consecutive time which extends a grievance and concurrent time which saves time.
Today I planted beans
as a way of waiting for something else, concurrent time.
Wait for enough things at the same time,
and every action becomes an effect.
Taking off a necklace. Watching a YouTube video on car repair. Drinking tea with jam
we made this spring, when you told me that I just need a little more time.
I'm embarrassed to tell you about completely ordinary days. Layering jasmine flowers
on a bed of oil, curing tomatoes for a salad, baking perfectly square loaves of time.
You taught me the universe has no edge, just a soft horizon,
like a bed ruffle. I was young and unforgivable, how I never visited while you served time.
You explained endlessness while holding a throw pillow, saying, This is not a model for the universe.
Promise, forgiveness, punishment: words I try not to say in relation to time.
I no longer tell you I must lean over the abyss to feel awe.
It is August. I am full of anticipation.
Beauty Talk
It’s not that appearances are deceiving, it’s that they are unavoidable.
My mother sends me to her best friend to be mistaken as a face she loves.
Once, the three of us prepared our faces at a single vanity. I was young then.
Boudoir pillows, so feathered I could not lift them. That summer, we lived
in this friend’s pool house and went to her parties on Sunday nights.
I want to write everything in the present tense.
The way women I love have practical applications for beauty and ask me to
practice basic forms.
Which woman was it, who braided my hair?
My mother and her friend were getting ready for another party when I
overheard that it's okay to marry a good man because he is good and nothing
else. There was shame in the friend’s voice. The two of them were passionate
people. They knew the gossip of their times. Whose ex laid bare in a
cornfield til morning. Who begged to be dropped in the river. Who seduced
the seminary student while having a toddler in tow. I did not understand the
shame of an ordinary life. I was the toddler and seduction for my mother was
simply speaking.
The Other End of Have You Eaten
When we were little, my cousin
and I split into stories. Malakas
and Maganda. We stuck
to our virtues. In our thirties now
we give away the best food.
A woman points to a muscle
and says, this one. Every few minutes
I know what to do with my body.
Then, my country fires chemical weapons
at the border. A brother I’ve never met
calls me the enemy. He misses the job
he never had at the call center
my cousin worked until
she started teaching judo
at the local college. After yoga
I pretend to bypass my whiteness
while it carries me into enemy
territory. Not unlike the relatives
who say they'll die from MSG.
Which sounds aggressive.
