Fighting Kite (pages 22-23)

This poem was published in The Kenyon Review in 1991, and since I only moved to California in 1989 after finishing my MFA, I must have written this poem during MFA school. I think this poem was probably workshopped in Yusef Komunyakaa's class, though there is a connection with my professor David Wojahn as well (described below). The poem is about my father's mental illness, specifically his stays in psych wards. (There's a blog post from 2009 on this poem, also.)         Vin, that psych ward is Dante's Inferno — circles within circles, you climb and climb. The sons of bitches in white, they're monsters and devils. You see, son, you're paying for your sins while you're there. Each circle a privilege you purchase with blood and bile. It starts with seclusion, the innermost circle. Almost a jail, but your bed's made up with wet sheets and you become Satan on ice — the teeth chattering inside your head, stones rattling round and round in a can. Then once a week, they take you down for shock, the mouse killed again with an elephant gun. First time was '46: the bed just like an electric chair — electrodes, colored wires — That's all I can remember. Except for that shock, vibration, a lightning flash dead in the eyes. And on your tongue a taste like bitter almonds or wet pennies. A buzz in your ears like flies. Closest to outside is the circle called grounds privileges, they let you walk all the way out to the high, black, wrought-iron fence surrounding the whole hospital. Air, trees, grass, flowers, the sky. Only the fence, your blue pajamas, saying you're different from real people. But how do you get there? Between is a tortured drama: wide, sloping stairs of kowtow and kiss-ass — mixing with real lunatics, the gamut Page 22         running from rapists to certified pigstickers, manic depressives to schizos. And always the devils in white, those sadists and macho bitches. But, Vin, it's always the walk I'll remember. The Thorazine shuffle. We're all diviners doomed to Dante's Eighth Circle: our heads on backwards for time eternal. We shuffle like mules rounding a millstone, wish it would end . . . we shuffle in line for lunch, we shuffle in line for meds, in line to piss, we shuffle in line . . . our slippers whispering shh, shh, shh. Page 23 Here's an excerpt of what I said about this poem in the earlier blog post mentioned above: My father was a schizophrenic. This doesn't mean he had multiple personalities — the layperson's usual (mis)understanding of schizophrenia. It meant, among other things, that my father sometimes heard voices, saw visions. In the Philippines, this meant Martin Avila Gotera was considered a visionary man. In the US, it just meant he was crazy. During my childhood, my father was often in and out of psych wards. In "Newly Released . . ." I imagine Papa telling me what life is like inside the psych ward at the VA hospital. Some of the material in the poem comes from things my father did tell me, for example, about his being given shock therapy at Letterman Army Hospital, though the details about that in the poem are wholly imagined. The wet-sheet treatment is also something Papa endured. I suppose some readers of the poem may think of the Dante connection as arising out of my literary background. Well, first, my father was himself a fiction writer who studied literature avidly and so quite likely could connect with Dante. In fact, he was quite an aficionado of The Divine Comedy. Second, my grandfather, Papa's father, Tatay, had in his sala (the formal living room), a copy of The Divine Comedy, an edition with the Doré engravings; as a small child, I used to sneak into the sala (I think now that maybe that room was off limits to the grandkids, because I remember sneaking) and pore over that huge volume. Not for the text so much — I didn't really read Dante until I was in college — but for those illustrations. I remember vividly the one that showed people walking with their heads facing backward, a punishment for the sin of foretelling the future. There was also another showing sinners rending their chests open . . . for what infraction I have no clue. . . . When I was in the Army, my MOS ("military occupational specialty" or job) was Military Pay Clerk. For a time, I worked at Letterman Army Medical Center, where I helped mentally ill patients (all military service members) with their pay problems. This was where I learned about the system of privileges (that we see also in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest). In the poem, I have my father use as a metaphor for that system the concentric circles of Dante's Inferno. (Ironically, my father was also a mental patient at Letterman Army Hospital three decades before I worked there.) It was also at this job that I witnessed what everyone called "the Thorazine shuffle," the way the drug Thorazine made patients essentially catatonic. With regard to the poem's poetics, here is what I said before about that: This poem is also the result of a one-sided competition with my former teacher David Wojahn at Indiana University, where I earned my MFA in poetry. "One-sided" because I don't think David knows about "our" competition. I remember one day in an MFA workshop, 20+ years ago, David had us read and discuss Craig Raine's poem "In the Kalahari Desert" which ends with this striking line: "Shhh, shhh, the shovel said. Shhh . . ." At a poetry reading some months later, David read a poem that also featured the word "Shhh" in the last line, and he may have even mentioned his own competition-of-sorts with Raine. Not to be outdone, I eventually produced my own poem with "Shhh" as an ending, however petty and unpoetic that might sound. In terms of craft, the poem is written in terza rima, Dante's rhyme scheme: aba bcb cdc, etc. Of course, as I suggested was my frequent mode in the previous post, I use slant rhyme, very slant rhyme. For example, "sons" / "sins" / "seclusion" or "kiss-ass" / "——stickers" / "Vin, it's." Quite distant rhyme in some places, then . . . in the case of those last three words given in that example, the two similar vowels, the trochee stress pattern, and the ending /s/. With regard to meter, perhaps predictably, a "roughed-up" pentameter (again, see the last post). This poem is a fascinating amalgam of my father's and my own experiences in connection with the Army and mental health, especially how both are connected with Letterman Army Hospital (later Medical Center). As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Fighting Kite (pages 20-21)

With this poem, we're back to poems written during MFA school. I think this poem may have been workshopped in David Wojahn's class. It's about my introduction into written language, into reading. What we've got in Act One of the poem is family history, about how I learned to read at age two or so. (By the way, there's a blog post from 2009 on this poem that gives more background info.)         My father, in a 1956 gray suit, had the jungle in his tie, a macaw on Kelly green. But today is Saturday, no briefs to prepare, and he's in a T-shirt. I sit on his lap with my ABC Golden Book, and he orders the letters to dance. The A prancing red as an apple, the E a lumbering elephant, the C chased by the D while the sly F is snickering in his russet fur coat. My mother says my breakthrough was the M somersaulting into a W. Not a mouse transformed into a wallaby at all, but sounds that we can see. Later, my father trots me out to the living room like a trained Z. Not yet four, I read newspaper headlines out loud for Tito Juanito and Tita Naty or for anyone who drops in. Six years later, I am that boy in a black Giants cap, intertwining orange letters S and F, carrying my father's forgotten lunch to the catacombs of the UCSF Medical Center, and I love the hallway cool before the swirling heat from the Print Shop door. In his inky apron, my father smiles, but his eyes are tired. The night before, I pulled the pillow over my head, while he Page 20         argued with my mother till 2 A.M. about that old double bind: a rule to keep American citizens from practicing law in the Philippines. His University of Manila law degree made useless. But California's just as bad. "You can't work in your goddamn profession stateside either!" he shouts. "Some land of opportunity." There in the shimmer of the Print Shop, I can't understand his bitterness. I savor the stacatto sounds. He leans into the noise of huge machines, putting vowels and consonants into neat stacks. Page 21 Here's a bit of what I said about this poem in the earlier blog post mentioned above: Readers of this poem often say it's about "the making of the artist." Not quite like James Joyce though, I'd say — more like "the making of the artist as a young preschooler." My father did train me for amazing feats, of sorts. He worked with me on the alphabet at age two or three so that I was reading before I was four years old. . . . I have always thought that this poem is not about me . . . but rather about my father. His strong ambition for himself, later deflected to/through me. His dogged andeavors and planning, culminating with earning his law degree. His disappointment at the Philippines enacting a law to prevent American lawyers from practicing there (since Papa was a naturalized US citizen). His even deeper disappointment that he was also not able to be a lawyer in his beloved America; to pass the bar in California, he would have had to go back to school, but since he was already a lawyer, he felt that such schooling would be below him. His further bitter disappointments as he worked jobs in the US that he felt were similarly beneath him: selling encyclopedias door-to-door, selling dress shirts at a department store, working as an offset printer running enormous printing presses. (Some of this is also described in the autobiography started on this blog.) Of his many jobs, the one I remember fondly was when he worked in a print shop. Ten years old, I loved the gigantic machines Papa ran, the sharp smell of the ink, the thunderous noise in the shop when the presses were turning. Probably the only way he could have been more heroic to me was if he ran a bulldozer or earth mover on a construction site. Needless to say, he was keenly disappointed in himself for not being a lawyer, for having to work under supervisors he felt were intellectually inferior to him, etc. Today though, I gotta say, when I go to a print shop for my work as a magazine editor, all that love for Papa comes flooding back when I smell that ink-laden air, hear the thudding whirr of the presses. I don't think Papa ever knew how much I idolized his printing-press work. Though I suppose, even after the fact, that would not have been sufficient consolation for his workaday suffering. .&nbap;.&nbap;. To round out Papa's story, he eventually did find work that suited him. As I have noted in various posts here, my father was a WWII veteran who had deep concern for veteran's issues. Papa ultimately found an occupation, not just a job, as a Contact Representative for the Veterans Administration; he assisted veterans with all sorts of problems: pensions, health care, service-connected disabilities, etc. Although this was not working with the law, the job was sometimes legalistic, and more importantly Papa felt great satisfaction in being of service to other veterans. So this is a story with a happy ending. With regard to poetics in the poem, here's what I wrote in the previous blog post. In terms of craft, nothing much jumps out at me that I haven't already discussed at length vis-à-vis other poems, except for the emphasis here on the letters of the alphabet. Not only in the earlier section when the child speaker is learning the magic of reading, but also the letter-based logo on the ten-year-old child's ball cap, the UCSF of Papa's work (University of California, San Francisco), and the single numeral "2" followed by the letters "A.M." And finally of course, the father's work with letters — vowels and consonants — making Papa a sort of primal man of letters, though he would not have appreciated that complexion in the least. As I noted with a couple of the earlier poems from the first part of the book, my line breaks in those poems seem now, with the benefit of hindsight, not so confident. In this poem, the lineation seems more sure-footed, with possible exceptions in the last stanza of the first page ("can't") and the last stanza of the second page ("swirling"). Other line breaks in the poem use enjambment and endstop strategically and operationally to enhance meaning. Finally, do look at that 2009 blog post. An interesting story in there about how Papa groomed me to be a chess Grandmaster at age 6. It's a fascinating story that explains much about the relationship Papa and I had — the ultimate topic of Fighting Kite. As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Fighting Kite (pages 18-19)

The previous poem, "A Visitor on Ash Wednesday," was set in the Philippines . . . some time after my birth in San Francisco, we moved to the Philippines for some years, where Mama practiced as a doctor (a pediatrician), and Papa worked on his law degree. This poem, on the other hand, is set during that same time but in the US, where my dad, in the context of the poem, is re-establishing residency in the US as a naturalized American citizen. More on that below. Incidentally, there's a blog post from 2008 on this poem that gives more background info.                     Naturalized American citizens living overseas             must return periodically to re-establish             residency by living one year in the States. There were the usual screaming kids, tugging on their Mom's and Dad's arms, whining for a Davy Crockett coonskin cap or six-gun with holster, a Shirley-Temple-curled doll that really wets. His son's probably playing in the toy department, the other parents must have thought about this lone man in line at the San Francisco Emporium — in line to see Santa. Between children jumping off and on his lap, Santa looked off to his left where a troupe of silvery Tinkerbells skated, the ice cooling the air of this huge room, a cathedral to free enterprise. I look now at this photo, faded thirty years, of the man who livened up Santa's workday: my father in a double-breasted brown suit, his red tie spangled with fireworks. In Santa's lap, Papa's holding a briefcase, blonde leather fastened with buckle straps. Papa beams at the camera with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Santa's smiling at this marvelous prank. Everyone in line laughed to see a grown man sitting on another grown man's knee. A snapshot meant for a son, half the world away in Manila. Your son who could hardly recall your face. Papa, after you whisper your Christmas wish into Santa's ear, shake his hand man to man, then step back into the world of business suits and residency rules, I want Page 18         the breeze from the skaters' ice to part your hair — shiny and black — caress your lovely face as you glide down the Big E slide, hugging the briefcase to your chest like a lonesome child. Page 19 Here's what I said about this poem in the 2008 blog post mentioned above: My father, as a naturalized American citizen (i.e., a citizen by law rather than by birth), had to re-establish residency in the US every so many years. He would spend that year living in San Francisco's International Hotel, among the manongs, male Filipino immigrants who had established this bachelor community on the edge of Chinatown. During one of those residency trips, my father sent me a photo of him on Santa's lap at the Emporium department store, just as described in the poem. I no longer have this photo, but I remember it vividly as one of the defining images of my childhood. It's memorable not only because, as the poem says, it's a "marvelous prank," but because it shows Papa's love for me: Filipinos can be very shy, almost to the point of shame, a profound cultural emotion called hiya, and the very fact that Papa did this, despite his hiya, says volumes about what he would do for his absent son. Papa and I never talked about the Santa event that I can remember. And so all the details are wholly imagined. The word "blonde" (female rather than the more accepted "blond") is intentional; the manongs had a slang term for their white girlfriends — "blondies" — and I don't doubt that Papa, himself a kind of honorary manong, had blondies. The poem is also about manhood and the dignity of work. My father, as a Filipino immigrant citizen, was not always able to work in the US at a profession he felt he could respect. At the time the Santa photo was taken, however, he was working as a civil servant for the Navy and was quite happy during his residency year. By having Papa and Santa shake hands "man to man," I am symbolically lifting my father out of the daily experiences of racial prejudice he probably had during those times — the late 1950s. The poem is thus simultaneously familial and political. I do remember that when I wrote this poem — probably in the early '90s, in Arcata, California, where I was teaching at Humboldt State University — I borrowed from the Santa scene in the movie A Christmas Story (the slide, particularly) as well as childhood memories of visiting Santa in San Francisco's downtown department store, The Emporium. As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Fighting Kite (pages 16-17)

I recall this poem in Fighting Kite was written in MFA school in 1986 or 1987. I think this was probably in a workshop led by Yusef Komunyakaa, who was friendly to this kind of magical realist material. (Incidentally, there's an earlier blog post on this poem that would help to give a fuller picture of the specifics surrounding this poem.)         Papa faced the devil again on the stairs to the living room. Seven years old, I couldn't sleep. Papa shouting: "Make it now, damn you, end it here." I saw clenched in his hand a buntot pagi, the long tail severed from a sting ray, the Filipino's traditional weapon against spirits. Papa kept his on the living room wall, and when neighbors would visit and talk of his monthly standoffs with the devil, he would take the buntot pagi down, let them touch it. When I was over at my friends' houses, I would hear people talk about Papa: "So brave, that Mang Martin," they would say, "Did you hear last night he took on the devil again?" When my great-uncle Tay Birco died, we prayed for nine days, a novena of dinners and dancing. Late into the night, the grown-ups told stories of encounters with demons. Eyes glistening, my grandfather Tatay described how when he was a boy, church bells woke him one night. Peeping out his window, he saw on the plaza facing San Antonio Church a man in flames, dancing in red-hot chains on the flagstone steps. Next day, all the neighbors asked each other, "Did you see that burning man?" then rapidly crossed themselves. Tatay's mother, my great-grandmother, once met a man in a hooded robe on the stairs in her house as she left for morning mass. Page 16         "Who are you?" she asked. "Can I help you?" When he threw back the hood, his face was like molten copper. She shrugged, walked on. But that Ash Wednesday when I was seven, I recall I stood rooted to the shadowy floor of Papa's bedroom. Half-heard voices downstairs, a glimmer of light wafted up. I could see the tusks, its eyes like glowing coals, as it climbed the steps. I could hear Papa praying below: "oh jesus save us from the fires of hell lead all souls to heaven help . . ." I can still see its red eyes. I'm sure if I had reached out, I could have touched spiny hackles — it was that close. Gliding by, the pig entered my dim bedroom. Page 17 Here's some of what I said about this poem in that 2009 blog post mentioned above: I was born in the US but lived in the Philippines as a small child for some time. While there, I eventually realized that my father would periodically have visions of the Devil. And that in these encounters he would take the Devil on as his nemesis. It was also clear to me as a child (the poem says I'm seven) that people did not write Papa off as a lunatic. Instead they believed in these visitations and saw my father as a visionary man, tormented as well as honored by the Devil. . . . Filipinos customarily believe in such occult happenings and in fact treat them as everyday occurrences. The speaker's great-grandmother is not at all surprised at meeting the Devil in her house. The speaker is also a participant in these Filipino beliefs. This speaker, in fact, is not a persona . . . it's really me. Seeing the devil pig . . . that's an actual memory. I remember that distinctly. My father was downstairs with the Devil, shouting at him. And then I saw the pig. It was dark. It lumbered right by me, very close, ignoring me. And then it went into the darkened door of my bedroom. Where it disappeared into blackness. I swear to God. This memory is one of the strongest, most vivid remembrances of my life. Looking more at that previous blog post, I see that I mentioned my great-grandfather being a priest and then promised to tell more of that story later . . . which I never did, it looks like. My great-grandfather was a Catholic priest, Father Timoteo Gotera. His "wife" — common-law wife, I think, not legally married — was Martina Gasataya. (In the poem, she is the woman who sees the devil in her house.) I don't know all the details, but I imagine that Fr. Gotera's parishioners thought of Martina as, perhaps, the housekeeper in the rectory? Though they had four kids together, who all had the surname of Gotera, so people must have known and not thought of her as a servant; I understand that she came from a wealthy family. A Gasataya relative who is doing genealogy research thinks she may have found some other kids besides the four I know about — my grandfather Felix and his three siblings, Encarnacion, Purita, and Joaquin (my two great-aunts and great-uncle). As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Fighting Kite (page 15)

This seventh poem in Fighting Kite is a Petrarchan sonnet. I'm not certain now when it was written but it might have been in MFA school, like some of the first poems in the book. I was certainly working at that time on achieving a good sonnet. (By the way, there's an earlier blog post on this poem.)         Papa said, "You know I would have to kill you," to Mama, who sat quietly, head bowed. I was just a kid — five or six — and cried deep gut-wrenching sobs. The moon, like a new coin in the window, sliced in half by blue knives of cloud. "You're too young to understand, Vin," he smiled. "It would be my duty as a man." A tear on her cheek, Mama whispered, "That's true." To this day, I don't know if there was another man or if they were only talking possibility, in case, for example, Mama felt her face begin to flush downstairs with a repairman. Her only safety net then — Papa's motto, A place for everything, everything in its place. Page 15 In the earlier blog post mentioned above, here's some of what I said about this poem: [T]he incident recounted in the first stanza did happen. I remember my parents talking in these words or something very like them. I was indeed five or six, and you can draw whatever inference you want from parents talking about such matters in the presence of a kid in kindergarten or first grade. The event certainly stuck with me. I think this was probably, from my father's point of view, part of my indoctrination into maleness, into machismo. Part and parcel, I think, of US Army training as he saw it, from the dual perspectives of trainer and trainee . . . father and son, in the way his father (my Lolo) taught him to be a man, through hard knocks and a thick belt. I mentioned above that this is a Petrarchan sonnet; in the previous blog post, I wrote, "I am using this form because of the tradition of sonnets as love poetry. In this case, though, the sonnet is being used as a vessel for 'anti-love,' for control and oppression in the name, allegedly, of 'love.'" I continued: To be more specific, this is a Petrarchan sonnet with an octave (or eight-line stanza) rhymed abba acca, a small departure from the norm, an octave made up of two envelope quatrains (abba abba). The second stanza is a more standard Petrarchan sestet (or six-line stanza) rhymed cde cde. There is also the usual turn (or volta) at line 9 . . . in this case, a change in time: the opening octave set in the speaker's childhood and the closing sestet set in the present. If the poem was in fact written while I was pursuing my MFA, this is pretty cool experimentation for a student. By that point, I had written quite a few sonnets before grad school, but usually Shakespearean ones, so this Petrarchan sonnet is nice journeyman work. Of course, this is all surmisal . . . I may have written it when I was more experienced as a poet. Sorry I can't be more precise here. In any case, do check out the earlier blog post about this poem. Lots of other interesting material there, such as the Salvador Dali allusion in the poem. Pretty heady stuff! As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Fighting Kite (page 14)

This poem in Fighting Kite was orginally written in 1998 for an anthology titled Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images, edited by M. Evelina Galang. The backstory of the anthology (described more fully in this blog post) has to do with a 1998 restaurant review in Milwaukee: the reviewer called a Filipino restauranteur's child a "little monkey," setting off an online brush fire of protest by Filipino Americans. Eventually Galang compiled and edited the anthology in reaction and response.         In birdsong my father strolled the Presidio of San Francisco, a Filipino in the U.S. Army, sharp in parade dress, lieutenant's bars riding his shoulders like sun cresting clouds. A corporal in dingy fatigues walked past my father, snickered, kept his right hand by his hip. "Hold it right there, soldier!" my father barked. "Where's that goddamn salute?" The corporal smirked, looked him in the eye and said nothing, but my father could read it in his face — I'll be damned before I salute a little brown monkey who ought to be climbing a fucking tree. My father growled an order. The soldier jerked to attention. My father slipped off his jacket, draped it on a hedge. The rainbow of ribbons reminded him not of crossfire and the soldier he saved on patrol, not of the forced retreat to Corregidor, not of the weeks evading Japanese capture, not even of the Bataan death march, nor of the concentration camp. Instead he recalled the American jeep that tried to run him down in a rainstorm. Get out of the road, monkey! My father said, "You might not want to salute me, young man, but you will salute this jacket, these bars. Do it!" Birds sang. "Again." Sun shone. "Again." The corporal's arm swept the air, a wiper blade trying to swipe brown mud from a windshield.     Page 9 The blog post mentioned above talks about this piece: The poem itself relates a family story. When my father was stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco immediately after the war, a soldier on the street refused to salute my father (who had been recently promoted into the officer ranks of the US Army). It was quite clear to Papa that the refusal was racist — the soldier, a white man, was not about to salute an officer who wasn't white. So my father took off his uniform jacket and draped it on a nearby hedge, then ordered the soldier to salute the jacket, affixed with lieutenant bars, again and again. Which the soldier did. My father always told this story as a parable about "thinking out of the box," as we say these days. The photo above is a very small snapshot I have of my father in his US Army officer's uniform, in front of the San Francisco Public Library downtown, in 1946, around the time this event happened. I'm sorry it's blurry . . . there is very little detail in the snapshot itself. In terms of poetic craft, the aforementioned blog post describes how the poem employs pentameter that has been intentionally "roughed up" [in] alternating couplets and tercets (all unrhymed). I have forgotten why I shaped the poem this way, but the pattern does allow me to produce some useful verse paragraphs, for example, stanzas 5, 9, 10, and 11. At the same time, I also get some nice stanza enjambments: "a Filipino in the US / Army," for example, in lines 2-3, highlighting the problems Filipinos encountered during that time, both in the US Army and in US society overall. So, basically,blank verse. In the final stanza above, you can see my use of sound effects. The corporal's arm swept the air, a wiper blade trying to swipe brown mud from a windshield. Alliteration and onsonance in the repetitions of SW and P in "swept" and "swipe"; also assonance in the I vowels of "wiper" and "swipe"; and more alliteration and consonance in the B and D in "blade" and "brown mud"; interestingly, because L and R are related (liquid) consonants, there is also consonance of L and R in "blade" and "brown"; finally, notice as well as the preponderance of Ps and Ds throughout the stanza. Fun stuff! As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Fighting Kite (pages 12-13)

This poem in Fighting Kite has an interesting history. It was written in an MFA poetry workshop in, probably, 1986. Some 20 years later, I was invited to read my poems on 26 October 2009 in the conference "Unsung Heroes: Asian Pacific American Heroism during World War II" at the Library of Congress. I read "Tatay" and two other poems there, as described in this blog post from that time.         My grandfather in a faded photograph is     a centurion blowing a Christmas party horn,         on his head my foil Roman legionnaire helmet. I remember him smiling like a boddhisatva     as he pulled on scuffed brogans to bail out         my uncle in the drunk tank—Tito Augusto had been brawling again. But in 1933,     Tatay seemed another man. My father         at twelve was circumcised with a couple of buddies. The ring of boys.     The penknife. Blood dwindling.         When Tatay heard, he bent my father over the Army trunk again. Set up     the pitcher and glass. He made his         two-inch-wide leather belt lick the boy’s naked back. Resting, he sipped water, then     got up, belt in hand. My father glanced over         at the pitcher to see how much was left. There were other stories. How after     the Bataan death march, they met, father         and son, in the concentration camp near Capas. Tatay shivered at noon, muttering of     bodies mantled with wings, ashimmer.         My father could see two compounds away, they were burning wood—bark the Igorots     use to cure malaria. My father crept         under the wire. A butterfly’s lazy tango in the glare. That itch     between his shoulderblades. A bead         of sweat. The imperial guard’s boots Page 12         a yard to the left. The Philippine Army     regulars who were burning the wood smirked         when they caught him, gathering branches in his arms. With fists and bare feet     pounding his head and back, did he recall         those rituals of trunk and pitcher? Cradling a bundle of sticks, my father     crawled back. I can see the bark dancing         now in water, next to the cot where Tatay moans in his sleep. I hear my father     singing softly. I can almost make it out, but         I can’t quite place the tune, a Tagalog lullaby. Page 13 Here's what I said about this poem in that 2009 blog post mentioned above: As part of my poetry reading at the symposium, I read the following poem, which describes my father's relationship with my grandfather, my Lolo whom all of us grandchildren and great-grandchildren called simply Tatay, the Filipino word for "father," because he was so much the patriarch for us all. He was a gentle, soft-spoken old man when I knew him, so unlike the chilling stories Papa told me of Tatay's brutal discipline towards him as a child. The poem, one of three I read at the Library of Congress, describes two sides of that relationship: first, how Tatay whipped my father cruelly and routinely, and second, how Papa found Tatay in the Japanese concentration camp and cared for him as he would have his own child. . . . In the poem, I highlight an ironic and iconic difference between Filipinos: the Philippine Army soldiers beat my father because he was a Philippine Scout, that is, a member of the US Army. In this context, because the US Army can no longer protect my father, they see him as too big for his britches because he is a Filipino in the US Army — uppity, someone whom they would see as having previously lorded over them. The irony is that Papa is beaten in order to save the life of the man who used to beat him. Along with "Tatay," I read that day "Honor, 1946" and "Refusal to Write an Elegy," poems that will be discussed later in the Fighting Kite blog posts, since they appear in the book. It was truly an honor to be able to read these poems at the Library of Congress, especially "Tatay," which holds a special place in my poet's heart. As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Fighting Kite (page 11)

This is the third poem in Fighting Kite. This one was not written when I was in MFA school, like the first two poems in the book. In this poem, my son Gabe is portrayed as six years old; he's now 26, so this poem was written about 20 years ago. Since the book was published 17 years ago, I already had the book in sight when I wrote this poem, with the collection in mind.         On the Avenue of the Americas, at noon two weeks ago Tuesday, a nun paced the grimy concrete, robed in black, a starched, white veil framing her stunning face, one-in-a-million supermodel cheekbones. Fifth grade, St. Agnes School, we boys bet on whether Sister Helen had hair beneath her wimple. Blonde? Redhead? A pageboy cut? Fishnets under her floor-length skirt? She shone in daydreams: rosary beads against nude skin. Today, my six-year-old son wriggled under the deck, a crawl space half-lit by thin slits of sky between planks. The yellow pencil he had dropped, a long-lost fork, an ancient pack of bubble gum—pushed up through the cracks. Near Manila, my father in third grade would plead some urgency—bathroom break? dizziness?—to get himself out of class, then shimmy underneath just such a floor, gaps between boards to let in cool river air for Miss Persephone Burke of Nebraska, a Thomasite teacher. Frilly white blouse, red belt, navy blue skirt sweeping the floor. For a marvelous prank and bragging rights, he would hide a slim, yard-long bamboo cane with a small pyramid of Wrigley’s gum panhandled from American soldiers. Giggling to himself, he would chew and chew until a hearty glob perched on the end of the rod. Crouching directly below Miss Burke, he’d reach up gingerly and stick the wad into her underclothes. A boy straining after what he could not have, joy and bliss forever beyond his grasp: America, Lady Liberty, the stars. Page 11 Compared to the first two poems in the book, I can really feel here how more confident my line breaks are. Of course, this poem was written about 20 years later than those earlier two, thus with 20 yeers more experience as a poet. For example, in the penultimate stanza, I end a line with chew and chew . . . two decades earlier, when I was an MFA student, I would probably have broken those two words apart, with a line break after the first chew, but as written here the repetition within one line brings strength into the language and the concept. In fact, as that younger poet, I might not have used that word twice in one poem at all (my teacher Yusef Komunyakaa used to say in class that if you use a word twice, you are weakening it in both places where it appears). Here I am contradicting my old teacher and have the self-assurance to use both of the identical words almost next to each other. Incidentally, the setting of this poem in New York City was inspired by a trip there with my oldest daughter Amanda for her to receive a Scholastic Gold Key award for literary excellence as a high school senior at Carnegie Hall in 2005. That award included a $10,000 college scholarship. Fun times! As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

 

The Stafford Challenge, Day 60

Today, a childhood poem in honor of my grade school classmate, Kathleen O'Callaghan, on St. Patrick's Day. The Tinikling and Irish Stepdance —curtal sonnet Although I was born in San Francisco, I spent a handful of years as a kid in Manila, where I saw lithe dancers’ feet dodge in and out of clacking bamboo poles in triple rhythm. Age 9, I moved back to San Francisco, where teen dancers bopped to the Twist and the Mashed Potato. Each St. Paddy’s Day, Kathleen, my classmate, would perform at school the Irish Stepdance— crazy footwork, arms held still. And I thought                         of bamboo beneath her prance. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.]   Photos of Tinikling dancing from the Philippines and Irish Stepdance from Wikipedia. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

The Stafford Challenge, Days 54-59

For 6 days in The Stafford Challenge, I've written a tanka each day. The tanka is a Japanese poetic form — 5 lines with syllable counts of 5/7/5/7/7 (think of it as a 5/7/5 haiku with a 7/7 couplet. Here's a description. Untitled, though if you have a tanka sequence (linked tankas), that is often titled. On Day 54, 11 March 2025, here's a poem about my mom. I haven’t written about Mama yet this year: soft sweet musky scent, steam in the kitchen, sizzle, crisp brown chicharon. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Chicharon—Philippine snack made from pork rinds or pork belly. Descended from Spanish chicharrón. On Day 55, 12 March 2025, a tanka on childhood memories again. my nights as a child were filled with the distant cries of a lovelorn beast through thick San Francisco fog . . . sad foghorns moaning —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge in fog Photograph by LinaHeps on Pixabay. On Day 56, 13 March 2025, a tanka from Robert Lee Brewer's Wednesday prompt for 15 January: a dream poem. In my dream I rise into soft air like bright fire: fly, soar, swoop . . . I wish. I can almost feel the wind sweeping me up. Oh, I wish. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo by Fionatusche_24 on Pixabay On Day 57, 14 March 2025, a tanka about a missed opportunity in the sky. Missed the blood-red moon last night: the lunar eclipse. Instead, my eyes turned inward, eclipsing themselves in sweet, dreamless sleep. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo from an NBC online news article about the lunar eclipse on 14 March 2025 Day 58, 15 March 2025. Day before yesterday, I wrote a "dream poem" which was actually about a dream I wish to have. Today, I'm writing about my actual dream from last night. A tanka sequence with title. Weird Dream In my sleep last night on some beach in Africa, I’d set up sound gear to splice and compile mixtapes: strange, rhythmic, spacey music. I wasn’t sure why I was there, or even who I was. Just some guy with a spaghetti bundle of wires and boxes on sand. And that weird music like a thick cloud around me: a hard pulsing beat, invisible instruments played by aliens. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo by emirizzi on Pixabay Day 59, 16 March 2025. Back to a single tanka today, based on an art photo by my friend Eric Garcia-March. thin tendril of white rising into a dark room, calla lily blooms, just a wafting plume of smoke that vaporizes, like life —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Photo by Eric Garcia-March Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

Fighting Kite (page 10)

Here is the second poem in Fighting Kite. I wrote this poem as well when I was doing my MFA at Indiana. I'm not exactly sure, but I think this was workshopped in David Wojahn's class. I could be wrong, though . . . I was in that MFA program almost 40 years ago!                               — for my grandmother   The sky purple as ube jam, two hours before the sun awakes in the Philippine Sea, Nanay walks to the beach where fishermen are landing. My father, twelve years old, who has come along this morning, carries her baskets. By sunrise, they are set up under an awning of banana leaves at market, and she is calling, “Bangus! Lapu-lapu!” “Good morning, Manang Lourdes. I have fresh sap-sap over here. That one there was swimming in Manila Bay just before dawn.” My father is dozing off, and she taps him on the head with a wooden spoon. “Hoy, Martin! Wrap up that fish for Manang.” Her voice would become rough and gravelly from calling, “Alimango! Hipon! Talaba! Sugpo!” Later that morning, she and my father carry their baskets through the streets. “Of course, the bangus is fresh,” Nanay tells Aleng Naty leaning out her window. “Look at the eyes. Bright as a pearl.” Digging a thumb under the gill, she says, “Look at that. Still red.” My father can see himself poised by the river, his fighting kite dancing on air. Page 10 I think I wrote this poem with the intention (or at least an inkling) of eventually writing the book that would become Fighting Kite. I was certainly writing a lot about my dad early in my MFA training. I wrote about my mom too, but in fewer poems. Lately, I have been writing more about Mama, looking forward to a possible book dedicated to her. Something I notice now about this poem is that my lineation wasn't as confident then. For example, now I would not have had that from at the end of a line in stanza 4 as well as the by in the penultimate line of stanza 6. I think at that point in my development as a poet, I was still learning how to break lines in my own way. As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

 

Fighting Kite (page 9)

Here is the first poem in Fighting Kite. This was written when I was pursuing my Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in poetry from about 1986 to 1989. I'm gonna guess that I wrote this in Yusef Komunyakaa's workshop. It certainly shows his influence, especially in my handling of imagery.         1931, although a drought year, still brings the feast of San Martin, turning Pasig’s main street into a river: colors strung from windows, a marching band in homespun. The market blooms religious relics, red and green papier-mache toys, in the church plaza. Little boys in yellow kerchiefs chase a greased pig in and out among buyers, competing for a purse of centavos. At sunset, the streets scintillate with candles, wisps of flame escorting the dark-skinned Virgin in gold and vermilion on hardy shoulders. Banks of townspeople singing hymns are led by Simeon, the cantor. The finale at full dark, the zarzuela stage show: all day grandmothers hinting about a “special appearance” tonight, perhaps a famous singer from Manila. But before all that, in the musky heat of early afternoon, my father is tying a sack of ashes behind his back, slung from his waist as he shinnies up a pole slick with pork fat. At the top, 25 feet above the hooting crowd, a pouch of pesos. The younger boys unable to reach, the older ones get a turn. “You’re 10, right?” the parish priest asks my father. “You go first.” Sweat stings his eyes. My father climbs 6 feet, starts to slip. The crowd chants, “Martin! Martin!” Slow like a cat, he stretches right hand then left into the sack. Fingers dipping in ash. Almost there, almost there. This is his life. Page 9 I have said often that Fighting Kite is a poetic biography of my father. In fact, this particular scene is fictional, though it's certainly possible that my dad partook in this fiesta game in the city of Pasig, Philippines, where he grew up. In this game, called Palosebo, youths try to climb up a greased bamboo pole to reach a prize, as described in the poem. I thought this game, with its difficulty and its ease of failure, was an appropriate metaphor for my dad's life. As such, this piece works as a kind of thesis poem for the entire collection. As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

Fighting Kite (page 7) Contents

Here is the contents page of Fighting Kite. The page numbers given are the same as those in the book; click on the page number for the blog post that features the poem on that page in the book. Since the book, at this point, is still being posted in the blog little by little, not all the page-number links will be live right away. I'll fill in links as poems and pages get posted.     9  —  Greased Pole             10  —  Selling Fish             11  —  Chewing Gum Upskirt             12  —  Tatay             14  —  Honor, 1946             15  —  Wedlock             16  —  A Visitor on Ash Wednesday             18  —  Photo with Santa Claus             20  —  Dance of the Letters             22  —  Newly Released, Papa Tells Me What It's Like Inside             24  —  Vietnam Era Vet             26  —  Hospital Thoughts, Last Year and Today             28  —  Refusal to Write an Elegy             30  —  Fighting Kite             32  —  Playing Chess with Papa                         35  —  Acknowledgements             37  —  About the Author Page 7 I'm excited to be presenting this book in this way. I'm thrilled to honor my dad through these poems again. I hope you enjoy the poems and the book as a whole. As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat.  FIGHTING KITE   INTRO FRONT CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST     UPDATE   20 March 2025 . . . I've discovered an error in the original Contents in the book. Two poems, "Wedlock" and "A Visitor on Ash Wednesday," were transposed. They have been corrected here. So this page does not exactly match the Contents page in the book.