Lolo Claudio in Colorado
Said he could not
stand the cold and hail, so
he went back to the city of
his affections, warmly sitting
on alluvium. There, he married
a colegiala of someone else’s dreams.
(Fast-forward seventy years)
At ninety-seven, he pulled out
of his wallet an aged
photograph which he said was
taken in Colorado in 1910.
Beside him, a girl, white,
very “foreign .” Their sepia
Said he could not
stand the cold and hail, so
he went back to the city of
his affections, warmly sitting
on alluvium. There, he married
a colegiala of someone else’s dreams.
(Fast-forward seventy years)
At ninety-seven, he pulled out
of his wallet an aged
photograph which he said was
taken in Colorado in 1910.
Beside him, a girl, white,
very “foreign .” Their sepia
smiles intimated unhurried
familiarities. Lolo said he could not
have married her. That even though
the law did not specifically include
him (him, belonging to
familiarities. Lolo said he could not
have married her. That even though
the law did not specifically include
him (him, belonging to
the Malay race), he still couldn’t
have, hindi maari.
Said he did not want
to be “odd” around her
to be “odd” around her
First published in TRAJE DE BODA: Poems (Meritage Press, St. Helena & San Francisco, 2010)
It's Love Love Love
in San Francisco
It still astounds me, the ways and ends of this particular world. What, in my post-wanderlust wandering, do I hope to find here, this water-bordered-square-miled otherness? I step out, one foot in front of the other on ground built on rubble and old ships, on faults moving at different rates. And yet, I am pleasantly surprised at how my instants are descending and passing with a softness I have not felt in all my free years. I am drenched in restfulness.
Walking uphill, it amuses me how these gentrified streets could not fully contain the Bohemian in them. The writer in me grapples with lost words and no-names. Like a gathering of mythic tribes, all merrily draped in the youngness of their youth and needs. How can all times and streets and kids converge here? How the years aged me. I was neither young nor born during such convergences.
And here I am, perpetually cooled by cold ocean waters. I must have reached the hushed edge of things. It is just a street. A foggy city. Just a bay. A sea. This is post-wanderlust, and I wish to never leave my heart anywhere but here. How sweetly the times have changed.
First published in Our Own Voice Literary Ezine, August 2008