Explore Poems: Poetic Terms

That two shells could be connected at their centers is a new thought I’ve never had. The way the canvas with its colors now turns into cubes. My life has been livid with itself for too long.

Two swans turn into four swans. As if each swan yearned for time but time just multiplied into other…

I laughed when my friend told me ‘laslas’ backward is ‘salsal,’ cutting himself one way, touching himself…

Tumawa ako nang sabihin ng kaibigan ko na ang kabaliktaran ng ‘laslas’ ay ‘salsal.’ Walang tumawa noong…

Before I was born, my mother says, there was another boy. My brother. One day, half-asleep during lunch…

When the dreamer dies, the dream begins searching for someone else—someone who might take it in and…

When my turn came, my father dressed me meticulously like a piece of dried fish. We all bear the jagged…

Obsolete is absolutely useless
although in the past
he was reasonably handy
time—it kept on ticking and…

It’s as though the birds all know each other, and how naively

they seem to believe the world will go…

wake up in pre-
dawn Brooklyn,
make water, heat water, squeeze
lemon, crush home-grown (at Joseph’s
on 68th…

We were wild children / we moved through space / like blades
We were tame children / we fell to sleep…

we wore watermelon husks to hide
lost cargo floating east to hong kong
water lilies & crickets our last…

you had to know the currents, & the sun
stay shallow to keep warm in the waters.
you had to believe you…

The end, I think, will be a little like looking down as far as I can see to where the wind has kicked…

The euphemism is “infusion” when confusion is what happens, and depends on no time in particular especially…

[if you marry your confession, you can live alone inside it. no priest behind the window. no wife or…

[as jumping from a plane. easier—a bridge. as tripping on a shoelace. as blinking your eyes. as breathing…

[all my exes agree i’m too sensitive. inside i’m keeping track of slights on one long receipt, a diaristic…