Fighting Kite (pages 32-33)

Here's the last poem in Fighting Kite.         Midnight upon midnight, I and my Macintosh computer wrestle for an audience—the voiceless ghost of my father. Our simple playing field: this ephemeral chess board constructed of fluorescent dots on a glass screen, tickled to life by an electronic finger. An everyday magic like Oprah, the Simpsons, and The Price Is Right on TV. I once tried to explain on the phone to my father how TV worked, and all the century's panoply: semiconductors, computers, microwave ovens, word processors. To him, it was all just magic. Like men in tuxedoes pulling rabbits out of hats, said Papa. No tougher than horse-drawn calesas, window blinds, screen doors, or crescent wrenches. You want something tough, take chess. Now there's something subtle and intricate for you. Chess: the supreme game of military strategy. Teach you to be a general, a leader of men. No bullshit. No screwing around with scientific gimmicks. And I said, Computers! The army used computers in Vietnam! My father and grandfather had both been soldiers—the word army was like magic to them: a secret password. But he wouldn't let himself be magicked— We lost that war, Vin. You know that. I couldn't believe it. Jeez! Did Papa speak those words? This man who'd dreamed of fathering a military dynasty, like some epic three-night-long miniseries on TV? All I'd really wanted was to tell him that I had a computer that could play chess—the board and men all on a CRT screen. That I missed him. That the board looked 3-D on the screen. That maybe he'd like to take the machine on, feel the magic of challenging the Grand Master living deep inside the computer. He'd wanted me to be the next Grand Master, an 8-year-old reading chess strategy manuals. We never played again. In memory's television, a cockroach large as a carved rook waves its antennas near my father's Page 32         head in bed—it was the last time I saw him. I left on a plane. Papa died two months later. And now I try to penetrate, enter the screen of my Macintosh. In my mind, like some nature show on public TV, the cockroach on the pillow and Papa's eyes closing, all in the magic of slow motion, their movements rehearsed and mechanical like chess. I play game after game in cybernetic space—and the computer always wins. This morning at dawn, I rose from computer chess and stood at the living-room window: a TV screen lit up by a magical saffron sunrise. I whispered into the glow: It's your move, Papa. Page 33 Chess was a huge part of my relationship with Papa. Here's part of the story in a blog post from 2009: When I was about six, he decided he would make me into a chess Grandmaster. So every day, we would drill on the chessboard, sometimes for hours. The King's Gambit. The Sicilian Defense. The Ruy Lopez Opening. (I only now learned, via Google, that there's an interesting irony here because the Philippines was named after King Philip not by Magellan, it turns out, but by the Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos. Fancy that. Ruy Lopez. I wonder if my father knew that.) We would replay famous chess games, such as the 1956 so-called "Game of the Century" in which chess master Donald Byrne lost to 13-year-old Bobby Fischer; as we duplicated the moves in these replayed games, Papa would have me analyze what made each move weak or strong. I suppose Papa was probably glad he taught me to read early, because he had me begin reading chess strategy manuals at this time. We spent a lot of time with endgame puzzles and checkmate tactics. (The only result of this training is that I ultimately lost my love for chess and now play only seldom.) I've often wondered if I disappointed my dad by not continuing to play chess as I grew older. Because of that intense chess training as a kid, I really lost my interest in chess. I was probably only playing to please my dad, not for myself. When I became a dad, I never pushed any of my kids to be this or that — it was more important to let them find their own passions. Anyway, when I wrote this poem, it was, in a way, a little bit out of guilt. And also the understanding that, after my dad died, that I would never be able to play chess with him again. By the way, with regard to poetics, this is a sestina. This medieval form, based on a six-line stanza (a sestet), takes the six final words in the first six lines and juggles them until each word has ended up in each of the line endings of the following sestets. This process takes up six stanzas. Then the last (seventh) stanza (a 3-line envoi) contains all six words (called teleutons, by the way) with three of them at the three line endings; the other three teleutons appear usually in the middle of the lines, so generally two teleutons per line. I have a good breakdown of the sestina form in this 2009 blog post. Here is another useful source about sestinas. And one more how-to source. Try writing one of these . . . sestinas are fun! 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 24-25)

I read this poem just a week ago to an audience of veterans. I gave a reading on 18 March 2025 at the Iowa Veterans Home, and this poem was well-received. This poem has had an interesting publication history. It first appeared in The Journal of American Culture (1993). Then it was published in my poetry collection Dragonfly (1994). Reprinted in Asian American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology (1996). Then it appeared again in Fighting Kite (2007). The poem has also appeared a couple of times in the blog. First in 2009, in "Keeping Six Words Tumbling in Air" (when I discussed it with some University of Georgia students whose professor had assigned it in an Asian American literature course) and second in 2025, as part the serialization of my book Dragonfly. In the more recent post from this year, I said, "this poem needs a trigger warning: a derogatory word for Asian appears in it, a word that is here because this is soldier talk from the '70s. I have not changed this word because it is true to the voice of this character (and it is a character, not myself)."         A fragrance remembered is Vietnam— the acrid odor of gunpowder and tracer fire, smudgy cooking fires in every hooch, the pungent scent of nước mắm and water buffalo shit, a father's acid sweat as he searches for his lost son in some ville, smoking from an H&I strike—all this was my wish. I'd look at my class A's in their plastic bag in the closet and wish sometimes I too had been to the 'Nam. I remembered basic training at Fort Ord, double timing in the sun to the range. "Ready on the left! Ready on the right! Fire at will!" Late nights in the latrine, I wrote my father long letters about being afraid I'd be sent over there. Everyone in the platoon was afraid of being sent, but not one of us admitted it. "Sure wish they'd ship me over to that motherfucker," we said to each other in the noonday light, "Vietnam— can't wait. Shoot me a fucking gook or two, fire mortars all goddamn night." Papa'd write back, "Son, let God's will be done. Just be a good son. Just do your job. If they send you, then they send you. That's all." And I'd lie on my dark bunk and smoke—the fiery tip of the cigarette curling like a tracer ricochet—wishing I loved it all. C-rations, the firing range, the memorized Vietnamese phrases, my leaky shelter half on bivouac. All for Papa. That was as close as I would get to my father's war. I'm sure my grandfather called him a good son, both in the U.S. Army, the Philippine Scouts. Their Vietnam had been Bataan. When the sergeant would send my father out on point, did he wish even for a moment that he hadn't joined up? Did artillery fire Page 24         make him cringe in his foxhole? That time he was caught in crossfire, did he try to will himself into a tree, a rock, a bird? Papa, I knew only the mortar's crump and whoosh, the parabolic path reaching up to California sun. I never knew the shrapnel's white-hot whistle at arc's end. Two nights ago, I dreamt I was in Vietnam: a farmer runs for the tree line—I fire a crisp M-60 burst—Vietcong, for sure, for sure. The LT sends me up to verify. In shimmering sun, Charlie's face is the one I wash in my helmet. No. It's your face, Papa. Page 25 Here's an excerpt from the 2009 blog post on this poem, with regard to some of the specific wording: In line 6, "H&I" stands for Harrassment and Interdiction: indiscriminate artillery fire at the enemy to break their morale; of course, this procedure caused a great deal of so-called "collateral damage," i.e., injury and death among civilians and noncombatants. Ain't military terminology as fun as a barrel of junkies? In line 7, "class A's" are semi-formal Army uniforms, similar to a suit and tie. A "shelter half" refers to half of a pup tent (line 24); two soldiers would team up to make up a single tent for bivouac or encampment. The Philippine Scouts (line 27) were an elite US Army unit before and during WWII; the Philippine Army was a separate force from the Philippine Scouts. In line 37, an M-60 is a heavy, belt-fed machine gun. Finally, "LT" stands for lieutenant and is pronounced ell-TEE (line 38). This excerpt continued with a reference to the 1996 textbook appearance: "With regard to the Wong textbook in particular, there are two errors. The word 'is' in the first line was typeset as 'in' in the textbook. Also, 'nước mắm' is misspelled in the textbook as 'nuoe mam,' without the diacritics essential in printed Vietnamese." The reason I brought it up is that blog post was intended to address some students at the University of Georgia who were reading my poems in the textbook in a class, and their professor contacted me to discuss the poems with them. The added benefit is that my own students in classes where we discussed my poems in the textbook since then have had that resource as well. With regard to poetic craft, this poem is a sestina. Here's what I said in that 2009 blog post: "[T]he sestina repeats the ending words of each line in the sestets (six-line stanzas) so that they eventually appear at the end of every possible location (the first line of the sestet, the second line, etc.). Then the repeating words (called repetons [REHP-uh-tawns]) appear in a three-line stanza (known as an envoi [own-VWAH]), two words per line, one at the end of the line and the other in the middle." This is actually not accurate . . . I misnamed the repeating end-words; they are in fact called teleutons (TELL-you-tawns). Take a look at the 2009 blog post for a diagram (in color!) of how the teleutons cycle throughout the poem. I quite like my discussion of how the teleutons are altered as the poem unfolds: As you can see, I "cheat" by altering the repetons occasionally (this is pretty common practice among contemporary writers of the sestina). For example, "Vietnam" becomes "'Nam" in stanza 2, "Vietnamese" in stanza 4, and finally "Vietcong" in the envoi. Almost always sestina alterations are done through consonance ("wish" ——> "whoosh" ——> "wash"). I'm pretty proud of how, in stanza 6, the "sent"/"send" sound is rendered by "arc's end" — cool, eh? I'm even more proud (perversely so) of "father" becoming "motherfucker" . . . a kind of literalist double entendre. And there is even a basis here (admittedly distant) in rich consonance: /f/ and /r/ in father and motherfucker, not to mention that the /th/ sound appears in both words. Poetry . . . no, poetics . . . is fun, kids! Finally, I want to focus on the genesis of the poem. I had read an excellent story, "The Persistence of Memory" by Walter Howerton, Jr. (from an anthology called The Perimeter of Light), about a Vietnam-vet wannabe who is driven to fakery to try to connect with his dead WWII-vet father. This poem is an imitation of that fine story, using some of my own autobiographical details: I am a Vietnam era vet — I was in the US Army during the Vietnam war but was not sent there — and I imagined a soldier like me connecting with his WWII-vet father, modeled after my own father. Anyway, the poem is not autobiographical, essentially, although it does use elements from my father's and my personal history. There's more on this in the earlier two blog posts. 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

Dragonfly (pages 40-41)

The next poem in Dragonfly is the last Vietnam-war-focused one. It's a sestina with a lot of alterations in the cycling end-words. This poem has its own separate blog post here where the specifics of the sestina-making are discussed. By the way, this poem needs a trigger warning: a derogatory word for Asian appears in it, a word that is here because this is soldier talk from the '70s. I have not changed this word because it is true to the voice of this character (and it is a character, not myself). More on that below. Vietnam Era Vet A fragrance remembered is Vietnam— the acrid odor of gunpowder and tracer fire, smudgy cooking fires in every hooch, the pungent scent of nước mắm and water buffalo shit, a father's acid sweat as he searches for his lost son in some ville, smoking from an H&I strike—all this was my wish. I'd look at my class A's in their plastic bag in the closet and wish sometimes I too had been to the 'Nam. I remembered basic training at Fort Ord, double timing in the sun to the range. "Ready on the left! Ready on the right! Fire at will!" Late nights in the latrine, I wrote my father long letters about being afraid I'd be sent over there. Everyone in the platoon was afraid of being sent, but not one of us admitted it. "Sure wish they'd ship me over to that motherfucker," we said to each other in the noonday light, "Vietnam— can't wait. Shoot me a fucking gook or two, fire mortars all goddamn night." Papa'd write back, "Son, let God's will be done. Just be a good son. Just do your job. If they send you, then they send you. That's all." And I'd lie on my dark bunk and smoke—the fiery tip of the cigarette curling like a tracer ricochet—wishing I loved it all. C-rations, the firing range, the memorized Vietnamese phrases, my leaky shelter half on bivouac. All for Papa. That was as close as I would get to my father's war. I'm sure my grandfather called him a good son, both in the U.S. Army, the Philippine Scouts. Their Vietnam had been Bataan. When the sergeant would send my father out on point, did he wish even for a moment that he hadn't joined up? Did artillery fire Page 40 make him cringe in his foxhole? That time he was caught in crossfire, did he try to will himself into a tree, a rock, a bird? Papa, I knew only the mortar's crump and whoosh, the parabolic path reaching up to California sun. I never knew the shrapnel's white-hot whistle at arc's end. Two nights ago, I dreamt I was in Vietnam: a farmer runs for the tree line—I fire a crisp M-60 burst—Vietcong, for sure, for sure. The LT sends me up to verify. In shimmering sun, Charlie's face is the one I wash in my helmet. No. It's your face, Papa. Page 41 Going back to my previous blog post on this poem in 2009, I wrote this: Many readers misinterpret this poem as being spoken by a grunt in Vietnam, a combat veteran. The central conflict of the poem orbits around the speaker not having gone to Vietnam. In fact the title of the poem is US governmentalese for someone who served in the US armed forces during the war but was not sent to Vietnam. Although this poem uses many autobiographical details from my own life, this speaker is a persona, not me at all. I personally don't feel this way about not having been sent to Vietnam; in real life, my father, even though he was quite the proponent for Army and veteran service, did not want me to fight in that war because he felt the war in Vietnam was wrong. So why did I write the poem? I had read and was wowed by a story titled "The Persistence of Memory" by Walter Howerton, Jr. (from an anthology called The Perimeter of Light). Howerton's excellent story focused on a Vietnam-vet wannabe driven by a deep need to connect with his WWII-vet father, now dead, who had condemned him for being an anti-war activist during the Vietnam war. After reading this bravura story, I wondered if I could write something similar using elements from my own life. So essentially "Vietnam Era Vet" is an imitation that ultimately transcends imitation. At least I hope so. Okay, despite the poem not being fully autobiographical, I am indeed a Vietnam era veteran, and here's a picture from my US Army service in the 1970s, when I was stationed at the Presidio of San Francisco. Receiving the Soldier of the Month award, Presidio of San Francisco, 1974 As always, I'd love to get some feedback or discuss anything with all y'all. Comment, okay? Thanks. Ingat. DRAGONFLY FIRST CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST

The Stafford Challenge, Day 36

Today (1/10 through the challenge!), a narrative sestina. Tough ’cause the word-repeating can distort the story. This one worked out okay. The details are true, mostly. My mechanic could tell what the problem with a car was by smelling the exhaust. VW Magician When I lived in San Francisco in the ’70s I had a mechanic who worked only on Volkswagens. Since I drove a Karmann Ghia, he was my go-to, for sure, and he was definitely the man. I tell ya this man (named Francisco) was sure amazing. To diagnose a mechanical problem, he only had to smell the Ghia! He could do that with all Volkswagens: Beetles, Super Beetles, VW Vans, Squarebacks, Things! And Karmann Ghias, fortunately. Francisco was proud to outfix any mechanic within city limits, I’m sure. His garage shared space with his home: family upstairs, VW shop downstairs with two mechanics. The garage was called Moon Bugs VW Repair. Francisco’s place was the only auto shop I ever took my Ghia. One summer afternoon, the Ghia was acting off, not her sure- footed self, losing power on the San Francisco hills. I was three blocks from my Volkswagen guy, so I just dropped in. The man did his famous smelling mechanic thing but could find nothing mechanically wrong with the Ghia that way. That man worked on my car out on the sidewalk surely three hours. His Volkswagen instincts were stumped, and Francisco kept working even after his mechanics went home. “Francisco!” his wife yelled from upstairs. “Give it a rest, man, dinner!” He said, “Sure, coming!” but worked till the Ghia was fixed. Dark, but saved his rep on VWs. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Not my Karmann Ghia, but mine looked exactly like that, with those bumpers and hub caps. In case anyone is not familiar with how a sestina works: there are six words at the ends of the lines in each sestet and those six words are recycled through the line endings until they have appeared in all possible slots in each sestet (which takes six stanzas); the seventh stanza, called an envoi, contains all six words (usually two per line), with three of the words appearing at line breaks. The six repeated words today are Francisco, mechanic, Volkswagen, Ghia, sure, and man. I fiddle a bit with the words ... really happy with man becoming Karmann at one point; man also transforms into moon at another point; and sure becomes share. Fun! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

Day 12 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2021

Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “write a poem using at least three of the following six words: convict, great, play, race, season, and voice. Extra credit for using all six words. Extra extra credit for writing a sestina. It's not a race, so I won't convict anyone who can't use all six words, but it is the definitely the season to play around and share your great voice. Now!” [Did you see what he did with the six words?] Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt today is called “Past and Future,” a challenge “to write a poem using at least one word/concept/idea from each of two specialty dictionaries: Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary and the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction.” I'm working from both prompts again today, using all six of Brewer's words, the words "morphed" and "non-human" from the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, and the mythological story of Daphne from the Classical Dictionary — which you might recall from Ovid's Metamorphoses. This is a hybrid sonnet, part Petrarchan with the abba quatrains, or maybe "over-Petrarchan," since there are three of these quatrains, rather than the usual two, rounded off by a Shakespearean ending couplet. Daphne, Apollo, and Me Too Apollo, as he raced the silver sun, his great chariot, across the sky, thought it would be marvelous play to chase Daphne, a beautiful woman, though still quite an ingenue. She ran in fear but who can escape the day itself? Daphne raised her voice and prayed to her father, the river god Ladon, who morphed her into a non-human form, before Apollo could have his way with her. She became the laurel tree, an evergreen, lovely in all seasons. Today, Apollo wouldn’t get away with it. Assault, attempted rape, he’d be convicted. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Apollo and Daphne by Gian Lorenzo Bernini The tale of Daphne and Apollo (usually titled "Apollo and Daphne") was a famous story of unrequited love throughout the Renaissance, probably because of Ovid's version in Metamorphoses. The most well-known artistic rendering is Bernini's renowned sculpture of the moment when Daphne turns into a tree just as Apollo catches her. What seems incredible to me is that anyone thought this was unrequited love! This is clearly an attempted rape, not unrequited love. Click on the detail of Bernini's statue below and look at Daphne's facial expression as the sculptor portrayed it. Unrequited love? It's predation, despite Apollo's serene look! Apollo and Daphne by Bernini (detail) I try to convey this idea in the poem with my use of the word "play" and "have his way" instead of something like "love" or "yearning." And then, of course, the poem's "me too" ending. Interestingly, it's the Brewer prompt's assignment of the word "play" that brought this on, along with the sonnet requirement to rhyme with "play." The long /a/ sound dominates at the end as well, with "Today" and "get away," and especially with the word "rape" in the last line. Another interesting way that form governs sense here is my naming "Ladon" as Daphne's father (from a variant version of the myth) rather than Ovid's "Peneus," since "Ladon" is a closer rhyme to the a rhyme ("sun" and "woman") in the opening quatrain. Actually, "Peneus" would have also worked as a distant slant rhyme, but the /n/ would have been buried in the word so I opted for "Ladon" instead. Alan did both prompts as well. Here's what he said when he sent me the poem: "This one is a rough beast. 'Tantalus' from one dictionary, 'thud and blunder' from the other, all of the six words, and a sestina, to boot —" Tantalus Each year seems an interminable race between the votes to elect or convict— news cycles one melodramatic play, thud and blunder lead their party, a great and noble candidate leads ours, a voice who will sustain us through a hard season, although we always weather each season and gasp for breath. As we prep for the race to come, we hope to mute the nagging voice that questions, “Why isn’t he a convict? Is it because he represents some great nostalgic hope? What motives are at play that they could choose that candidate? The play we’ve seen for years, season after season, has changed with each director, and a great character motivation has been race and racism. Much too slow to convict the killers, states criminalize the voice that calls for justice, deny the stilled voice whose resonance continues its strong play in the nation’s conscience, “Be a convict for a cause,” it says, “good trouble, seize on a principle and act; it’s not a race alone—no one is alone. A true, great day will come.” Will Matt Gaetz think it is great? Will Marjorie Taylor Greene lend her voice? With Ted Cruz and Jim Jordan in the race, is Josh Hawley already out of play or merely out for the current season? Mired in a system that will not convict the man who deserves to be a convict, who claimed to “make America great again,” wanted most a renewed season to broadcast a bullying, empty voice that relies on Big Lies and not fair play, he insists he has won a stolen race. Should law convict him, who will be the voice of Q-Anon? Great policies at play each voting season, who will win the race? —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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Day 19 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2020

Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day prompt: “write a poem that uses the following six words:             • bump             • embrace             • fixture             • howl             • lonely             • resolve How did I come up with this list? Actually, it’s a tie-in to our Shakespeare Week that starts today, because the Bard is actually credited with inventing all six of these words. Pretty cool, eh? For sestina fans, I kind of intentionally made it six words for a reason. So let’s get writing!” Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Today, our optional prompt challenges you to write a poem based on a ‘walking archive.’ What’s that? Well, it’s when you go on a walk and gather up interesting things – a flower, a strange piece of bark, a rock. This then becomes your ‘walking archive’ – the physical instantiation of your walk. If you’re unable to get out of the house (as many of us now are), you can create a ‘walking archive’ by wandering around your own home and gathering knick-knacks, family photos, maybe a strange spice or kitchen gadget you never use. One you’ve finished your gathering, lay all your materials out on a tray table, like museum specimens. Now, let your group of materials inspire your poem! You can write about just one of the things you’ve gathered, or how all of them are all linked, or even what they say about you, who chose them and brought them together.” I appreciate how Alan so adeptly merges the two prompts, especially how he gets the words bump and howl to work so seamlessly. And the opening line is a hoot! Touring the House I wandered lonely as a dad between his tasks while safe at home and found the sound of “bump” came from the water drained from the main bath, and so I checked the fixture there, assured myself there is no leak, and wiped some toothpaste residue one of the kids left in the sink. I keep banged-up used copies stacked beneath the towels on a wire rack and see somebody’s reading Howl from all those books—I don’t know who. The john’s a fine and private place to read Ginsberg and wash your face. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Alan's poem is a hybrid sonnet, mixing Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Clare: the first quatrain is a Petrarchan envelope, the second a Shakespearean alternating, and then the closing sestet is comprised of Clarean couplets, which is both a Petrarchan mode and Shakespearean with the ending couplet. The rhymes in lines 5 and 7 are fascinating: there and -due (rhymed consonantally with the related sounds th and d), but wait, there's more . . . we have enjambed rhyme as well, with there, /assured and residue! Today, from me, we have another poem in my aswang novella-in-poems. (Specifics on that project here.) This is set in early 1945, after Santiago's unit has been deployed to fight the Japanese in the Philippines. The two lovers have now had to weather two years of separation because of his military service. In terms of form, this is a sestina that uses Robert's six words in order; the poem also follows Maureen's prompt with Clara walking around her home with Santiago to gather objects that remind her of him. I was fortunate Robert had included the word "howl" because it gave me the entree into an aswang poem today. Aswang Despair Late at Night I was awakened suddenly by a bump in the night, and I turned to embrace Tiyago but he is gone for now. A fixture in my life for ten years, gone. A howl echoing far off is how I think of him. Lonely for my husband away at war, I resolved to be stronger. After all he had resolved to fight for our country — he was no bump on a log. The two of us have had two lonely years while he trained. I’ve learned to embrace this duty he must follow, but in my heart I howl at the unfairness of life. I’ve fixed your face in my mind’s eye as a bright fixture to get me through the days when my resolve slips. I wonder if, deployed now, you howl, fighting in the old country, sharp bumps of bullets and shells loud in your ears. Brace yourself, mi amor. I know you are lonely. If it helps, you should know I’m lonely too. I got out of bed, picked up your picture, hugged it to my breast, the only embrace I own now. I started walking our rooms, resolved to find things connected to you. My foot bumped the dining table you constructed, and I howled at the pain in my little toe. My small howl helped for a moment, distracting me from lonely musings. I found another photograph: my baby bump with you rubbing it jokingly as if to fix it, your smile so bright, your eyes twinkling, your resolve to be a good father so clear in your face. I embraced you that day, I recall. A long, loving embrace that almost removed the memories of you howling and me hunting pregnant women. We then resolved again to give up the aswang ways, no matter how lonely that would make us, just invisible ordinary fixtures in the world of humans. I went to Malcolm, sweet bump of ours, and embraced him. He is our brave fixture among the others, old prey. Bumped, Malcolm howled in his sleep. Instantly lonely, I feared for our resolve. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] I had a blast playing with the teleutons or end-words; it was tough to use fixture seven times! I offer a bonus poem today . . . an elegy in these times of the novel coronavirus. In Memoriam John Prine, Dead of COVID-19 Most days, we expect to hear from a famous author of songs loved by millions for decades even more of his lovely music. He was only seventy- three, John Prine, loving and loved husband and father. My daughter Amelia and I have a duo called Groovy News, and we perform a noteworthy song by Mr. Prine, “Angel from Montgomery,” about an old woman living with her old husband, their lives a desert of lost dreams. The song asks, “How the hell can a person go to work in the morning / and come home in the evening and have nothing to say?” The man told us simple, unvarnished truths. COVID-19 may have taken John Prine but in song he lives on. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] RIP, John Prine. Thanks for reading, everyone. Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word “comments” in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ

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Poems Eligible for a Rhysling (Part 3)

On Friday, I posted a list of my 2016 speculative poems that are eligible for a Rhysling Award. Of those poems, these are the ones that appeared only in print in Popcorn Press's Halloween anthology Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories. Available at the press and also on Amazon. This first poem has to do with the aswang: a mythical Philippine monster. The specific kind of aswang featured here is the manananggal, a woman who can sever herself at the waist: the top half grows wings so she can fly in search of prey, leaving her bottom half wherever it is standing when she transforms out of her human-appearing form. Encounter on Good Friday — Cutud Village, north of Manila, 1936 On his straw mat, his banig, under the inky susurrus of the mosquito net hung from the walls of his nipa hut, a bachelor farmer named Santiago de la Cruz lounges half asleep, half dreaming of the Easter sunrise mass day after tomorrow and of today’s penitentes flogging their own backs into bloody crosshatch, a couple crucified for a handful of long minutes. Tiyago gazes up toward the now charcoal-tinged underside of his thatched palm-leaf roof and starts at an indistinct shadow above, shaped darkly like a crucified person. What? Tiyago rolls out of the net and fixes his eyes above. Yes, there is something there in the pitch black. Wait, is it a dark brown woman with her arms outstretched, gripping the almost invisible bamboo supports of the roof? A ghost? A hallucination? Tiyago rubs his eyes and looks again. Her eyes are dark red like dying coals. He crosses himself quickly, notices a rippling behind her like a mourning-dress curtain. Susmariosep, Tiyago whispers, she got wings like a bat! He slowly realizes there is nothing below her waist but a few brackish red loops of, what, guts, torn intestines? Wait, it’s not a whole figure. She has no legs. No legs! O my Jesus, an aswang . . . putang ina, she’s a mananananggal! The aswang smiles, teeth a dingy slate gray, and from her mouth slips a dingy blood-red thing like a snake or maybe more like a thick dark earthworm that writhes wildly, closer and closer to Tiyago. It’s her tongue, a ten-foot-long tongue. Hold on, she’s trying to suck my blood, the black harpy! He clenches his arms, his fists, shuts his eyes hard. The aswang’s tongue slinks, inches, nearer to his neck. His body in the shadowy center of the room seems to sprout fur, arms and legs thinning and crackling into wolf-like limbs. Tiyago is growing taller and bulkier, T-shirt and boxers ripping apart like tissue. He growls, dark yellowish fangs flashing out of the lengthening snout of his face. Tiyago is also an aswang, a shapeshifter churning into a huge black dog, larger than a man, standing wide on hind legs. The two monsters growl and snarl at each other, a tableau carved into the dusky sweaty air of the room. Then it stops. Both of them laugh, they snicker and snort, convulse in dark shrieks and screams of black humor. The manananggal pulls in her slimy tongue, waves at Tiyago, and swoops out of the window, her pterodactyl wings sighing velvety tik-tik, wak-wak sounds. Tiyago lifts his noble black head to the heavens and howls. —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) In this next poem, the two aswang from the last poem have fallen in love. Clara, the manananggal, has been under suspicion by her fellow villagers of being an aswang. One night, they attack — almost like in the first Frankenstein movie, when people with torches and pitchforks hunt Boris Karloff's character. Santiago, the shapeshifting farmer from the previous poem, changes into his aswang form to rescue Clara. Villagers at Clara’s House, After Dark — hay(na)ku Ay, dios ko, malaking aso! Giant black dog attacked, rabid, rending . . . Aswang! . . . jumping up toward our necks, faces. Threw our torches, bright fangs. Aswang! Swung bolos against black fur, useless. Guns, no good, too fast. Aswang! We scattered, scared for our lives. Next day, Clara was gone. Aswang! —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) In case you weren't able to figure it out from the context, the opening sentence of the previous poem, "Ay, dios ko, malaking aso!" means, in Tagalog, "Oh my god, a huge dog!" Aswang Wedding: Early Saturday Morn The aswang lovers held each other’s hand, kneeling at the teakwood communion rail of La Iglesia de San Agustin, the simple granite-walled Spanish chapel not far from the shores of Manila Bay. Heads lowered, the humble country couple waited while the parish priest, Padre Rey, drowsy, wished he was asleep in his bed. Raising his hand he droned, In nomine Patris et Filii . . . Dawn, a faint red, kindled stained glass the deep dark shade of blood draining from a body torn and shredded. Rings, sign of the cross, yes, but Padre would later tell how his heart sank at the end: fangs glinting in the bride’s smile, the groom’s mouth. —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) The three poems above are part of my novella-in-poems, currently in progress, telling the story of these two aswang in their attempt to live a normal life — normal if one is a human, that is. After marrying, Santiago and Clara emigrate to the US, feeling they won't be persecuted there because most Americans don't know about aswang. In this next poem, the priest is not the same priest in the wedding poem directly above. Some readers have thought they were the same person, perhaps because in Lupine Lunes, these two poems are next to each other. The Good Father The folks at St. Mary’s Church thought well of their priest, Father Joseph Paolo. Every Sunday, after each of the masses, he would stand in the narthex and greet every person, shaking their hands, while above in the tower, the church bells would sonorously ring. The parishioners often recalled, our last priest would be damned rather than greet anyone. Father Joe was at his best with weddings, so friendly, so accommodating, so gracious, and each wedding couple felt genuinely special. Yup, no one better than Father, everyone always said. But Father Joe had a secret so damning some days he could hardly believe his vocation. His secret would send him to hell, he frequently thought, to the deepest, darkest ring of the Inferno. Sometimes, unable to sleep at night, his hands would burn and sting, and he wondered how his flock’s hands couldn’t feel the hot guilt in his grip. Every week, on Wednesday evenings, he would hold Bible Study and his voice would ring with authority and wonder, but inside his soul, he’d feel farther than ever from God. And truth. Because his own truth would keep him exiled forever from heaven. His secret? He’d damned someone to hell. Not just someone, his beloved. She was damned to perdition as if he had killed her, body and soul, with his own hands. In his last year of college, Joe Paolo had fallen in love. He was just wild about Francesca. And she adored him. Often they talked about a wedding: a silver dress, champagne, a four-tiered cake. Joe even went to her father and asked for Francesca’s hand—truly old-fashioned. He bought a ring, a lovely one with three diamonds, got down on one knee, and put the ring on her finger. But Joe got scared. And ran. Ran all the way to the damn seminary. And Francesca hanged herself. Even after he became a Father, Joe never told anyone, not even during confession. He ached for her hands to give him absolution, cool water from God’s font. With every wedding he hoped for peace. Then, one evening in the church, she came. It wouldn’t be as he thought: Francesca floating above, in a silvery gown, and she would forgive him. No. She appeared as an angry ghost in the dark chancel, ringed by fire, glowing chains of molten iron holding her down, apparition wedded to blackness and stinking filth, the smoke-heavy shrieking of the damned wafting around her. Francesca was whispering. She held out flaming hands and beckoned. Come to me, come to me. He fell to his knees, the poor Father. That night Father Paolo felt the closest ever to being eternally damned: an imprint appeared up on the cross, a woman’s hand burned into the wood, sweet Francesca’s softest caress, with an unburned gap for a wedding ring. —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) Apropos of the next poem, I hope there won't be a full moon during the upcoming Presidential inauguration. Lupine Lunes, Starring Donald Trump Donald Trump, werewolf, turns in wash of moonlight, presidential, with fangs. Donald Trump sprouts wolf fur in tailored shirt, fresh from China. Donald Trump’s canines glow like radioactive little fingers, fluorescent plastic teeth. Donald Trump’s tail wags while he whines, howls at harvest moon. Donald Trump: “I’m The most handsome werewolf ever, believe me. Handsomest!” Donald Trump’s paws fumble in the voting booth, no opposable thumbs. “Donald Trump, President. And also Wolfman, so what? Everyone loves me.”                                 "Here's Donny," Daily Mail, 16 October 2015 —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) I got the idea for this poem from the anthology's title "Lupine Lunes," announced in the book's call for submissions of poetry and fiction. The phrase is a truly witty title by the editor, Lester Smith, founder and editor of Popcorn Press, because of course werewolves are turned by the moon — la lune in French — when full. "Lune" is also the name of a poetic form, invented by Jack Collom: a three-line stanza with three words in line 1, five words in line 2, and three words in line 3. Friends, do check out Popcorn Press. For a number of years now, Lester Smith and the press have published a Halloween anthology. Always fun. Popcorn Press has published many wonderful collections and anthologies. And pick up a copy of Lupine Lunes at the press or on Amazon. Won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. To comment, look for a red line below that starts Posted by, then click once on the word comments in that line. If you don’t find the word "comments" in that line, then look for a blue link below that says Post a comment and click it once. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ  If you got here from my list of Rhysling-eligible poems, please click here to go back to the list.   P.S. I just realized today (11 May 2017) that I left a poem off. All Zombies, Coming and Going —  a somersault abecedarian ... read first down left column and then down right column same words, new punctuation All Bury Caskets. Doom’s Exhausted. Forever Green Horrific Inside Jujubes Kissing Lips, Miniature, Never Oblique. Plan Quiet Reveries, Secure Trees. Under Visible Wound, eXit Your Zipper.                     Zipper Your eXit Wound, Visible Under Trees’ Secure Reveries, Quiet. Plan Oblique Never Miniature Lips Kissing Jujubes Inside Horrific Green. Forever Exhausted, Doom's Caskets Bury All. —  Vince Gotera, Lupine Lunes: Horror Poems & Short Stories (Popcorn Press) (Added 11 May 2017)

Day 13 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2014

Too bad today isn't a Friday for Day Thirteen. Unlike those afflicted with triskaidekaphobia, I find the idea of Friday the 13th strangely attractive. Since today is Sunday, anyone know what year we'll have a Friday the 13th in April? Comment below if you know. In the meantime, here are the two "official" prompts for this April 13. Maureen Thorson: "Our optional prompt for today is to write a poem that contains at least one kenning. Kennings were metaphorical phrases developed in Nordic sagas. At their simplest, they generally consist of two nouns joined together, which imaginatively describe or name a third thing. The phrase 'whale road,' for example, could be used instead of 'sea' or 'ocean,' and 'sky candle' could be used for 'sun.' The kennings used in Nordic sagas eventually got so complex that you basically needed a decoder-ring to figure them out. And Vikings being Vikings, there tended to be an awful lot of kennings for swords, warriors, ships, and gold. But at their best, they are suprising and evocative" (NaPoWriMo). Robert Lee Brewer: "For today’s prompt, write an animal poem. Pick a specific animal or write about your animal spirit. Maybe you'll get tricky and write about mustangs (meaning the car) or jaguars (meaning the American football team). Maybe you’ll do an acrostic, or even go crazy and write a sestina (crickets)" (Poetic Asides). Well, here we go. Pretty easy to mash-up these two prompts. And as you might know, I love dragons. I've also found a way to have fun with sestina-making today, I think. A technique borrowed from my former student Nathan Dahlhauser, who wrote a sestina sestina sestina in a poetry class a couple of years back. Thanks, Nathan! Thanks also to my girlfriend Kathy . . . I gave her a convoluted explanation today of how the end words of a sestina recycle; that got me to thinking about how the recycling could be made easier. Dragon Sestina What could be more optimal for a Dragon Sestina than using the word "dragon" as an end word? All six end words could be "dragon," in fact. That way there'd be no drag in having to sort out when you'd need "dragon" again, 'cause every time you'd put in "dragon." Yup, dragon. Then dragon. Then, uh-huh . . . dragon again. But given today's prompts, you'd have to drag in a kenning or two, right? For example, a dragon kenning might be "fire worm." But that's a familiar dragon image already, from ancient days. A new kenning for dragon might be "reptile flame-thrower." But that dragon just might be too moderne. Violating the traditional dragon mystique. You could allude to the constellation Draco by kenning "multi-double-eye snake" because Mu Draconis is a binary star in that system, along with Nu Draconis and Omicron Draconis and several others. Some Draco stars, in fact, are actually triplets. Because of the Draconids meteor shower every October, "stone-rain dragon" could be another kenning. Is it too draconian, do you think, to insist on repeating "dragon"? Are you, dear reader, getting tired of hearing "dragon" so often? Would it stretch credulity to hear "dragon" right now? For me, it isn't yet a drag, and we're still having fun, right? We're not dragging our feet yet, thinking, "Oh jeez, here comes 'dragon' again." In reference to military history, "dragoon" might give us a little break from the word "dragon." Another variation might be the name Count Dracula taken on by Vlad the Impaler when he became a Dragon, or more precisely was invested in The Order of the Dragon. The kenning then might be "blood-gulper son-of-a-dragon," the literal technical meaning of the word "Dracula," not the blood part but the bit about sons and dragons. Dragon sestina about done. Should we avoid dragging on by saying "dragon dragon dragon" now or does "dragon" need sestina'd with respect? Nah. Dragon dragon dragon. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] I'm pretty proud of getting "dragon" or some variation of the word in here 46 times — 7 more than the customary 39 occurrences of end words in a sestina. Hope you enjoyed that. And now on to Dr. Thomas Alan Holmes's poem for the day. "I attended a poetry reading today," says Alan, "sponsored by the Bristol Public Library and featuring three Appalachian poets that I know. About thirty people attended, aside from the readers and library staff, and it was pleasant to be among talented friends appreciated for their creative efforts. It was especially good, in this time of working to keep our poem-a-day vow, to hear how other people benefit from writing and sharing poetry." Sounding Suppose sometimes a prankster, desperate for one last jab, decides, his time at hand, to stand with equanimity waist deep and dies at peace, aware that everyone he knows will face interrogation; how he laughs his breath away, his dropping splash the final earthly sound he ever hears. Beneath the Gay Street Bridge, that floating man has drifted with the river current, wedged against a bridge abutment, held in place, perhaps, by detritus unseen, submerged beneath the oily, earth-toned, sluggish flow. The medical examiner will file reports, recording indications, clues, and findings. Was he robbed and killed? Who might he be? Might he have drowned? Whom do we tell? And I, of all our friends, have figured out what he has done, his “gotcha” prank, but I decide to keep the secret to myself, to keep resentment from their loving grief. If I’m complicit, I confess it here. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes     [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Interesting to me here, Alan, how the dying man's final wish is honored, a prank piled upon a prank. Great poem! Won't you comment, friends, please? To make a comment, look for a blue link below that says Post a comment; if you don't see that, look in the red line that starts Posted by Vince and click on the word comments. Ingat, everyone.   ヅ

POEM-A-DAY 2014 • Pick a day in April: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Dragonfly (pages 18-19)

Okay, so there was a two-year gap between the previous Dragonfly post and the one before that. And then from that last post to now, a nine-month gap. Has any project ever hung fire so much? It's been so long, in fact, there may be readers who have never seen a Dragonfly post. To those friends, let me explain: I'm blogging my first poetry collection page by page, or rather, poem by poem with commentary on craft or the circumstances surrounding the composition of the poem, etc. At the bottom of each post, you'll see a little box at bottom right that will help you navigate to the initial Dragonfly post (from late 2008), the table of contents, and so on. This next poem in the book is thematically related to the previous poem since both deal with gambling. Uncle Ray Shoots Craps with Elvis It was Christmas 1963, and my mother's youngest brother, Ray, was hitting all the tables at Harrah's: blackjack, roulette, craps and baccarat — the exotic Monte Carlo import into Vegas. In a trés chic hotel room, stories above the glitter of games, another man was suiting up in silver lamé and rhinestones — Elvis Presley, ready for whatever — rock-n-roll's unruly King. And so they met, two sovereigns, my uncle whose name means king and the honey-throated emperor of the silver screen. Uncle Ray, in a white shirt and gray sport coat, sat down across from Elvis under the dusty yellow light wafting down on the green and red craps table. The shooter, a platinum blonde who was new to the game, giggled as she fondled the dice, peeking at Elvis the Pelvis through Vegas showgirl lashes. Neither the blonde nor Elvis paid the vaguest attention to my uncle. Elvis ordered glass after glass, first "The King of Beers," then later Johnnie Walker, Southern Comfort. The game went on: Platinum giggled and threw, giggled and threw. Uncle Ray bet with the table, and Elvis bet against. In front of my uncle, a crop of red and blue chips blossomed and grew. Again and again, Elvis called for a new stack of chips. The table wavered in front of Elvis's eyes: was he ready to wager his diamond ring, his sequined vest, his Vegas Caddy, the keys to the city of Memphis, his entire tobacco and cotton crop in Tennessee? Who was this little man who dared challenge the King? Did Elvis squint into the smoky glare, trying to focus on Uncle Ray? Maybe he looked just like a favorite servant, the grounds- and game- keeper at the Tennessee farm: Juanito from Cuba, who raised game cocks and racing greyhounds for the betting pleasure of Elvis and his retinue. On the other side of the table, Uncle Ray peered through his own lowered eyelashes at the King of Vegas and saw a brash young man, cruelly handsome but no King. Drunk as a skunk, he would later tell us kids. At that craps Page 18 table, Elvis was just another foul-mouth holligan. "Crap" was the gentlest cuss word he said that night. As the game went on, I noticed a bulge under his coat. It was the king of handguns, a Colt .45 — the more he lost, the more Elvis stroked its pearl handle. Then he bet all his chips and the "Vegas Equalizer," as he called the gun. I thought to myself, This is it, Ray, do or die. The dice flew. Elvis got up real shaky: he'd crapped out: "Life's a game," he said. "Now you're King." "Just call me Ray," I told him. Then he and the blonde staggered out into the streets of Vegas. Page 19 This is based on a true story. Though I've made up everything. My cousin Monica (Uncle Ray's daughter) once told me at a family gathering, "Hey, did I ever tell you how my dad shot craps with Elvis?" I said something like, "Nicky, don't tell me another thing. I want to write about it without knowing the details." This poem may also be connected to my MFA professor David Wojahn's assignment to write a poem in which a family member meets a celebrity. I didn't write this until several years after I was David's student, but there it is. Some of you may know of that famous Wojahn assignment, which has been published here and there. What else can I say? It's a sestina. Google that word or click on the word "sestina" in the labels below. I wrote a decent blog post on the sestina in March 2009. Let's see . . . that picture of Elvis above is from a Sun Records promotional photo when he was 19. I tried to find an image of Presley that's not well known. I borrowed it from Wikipedia; click on it for more info. The picture's in the public domain. There's a small anecdote connected to this poem for me. I was a visiting writer at the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, at UMass Boston during the '90s, and I performed this poem, among others, at a reading. During the Q&A, a well-known scholar and historian of the Vietnam war called me out for sexism, citing the portrayal of the character of the showgirl as evidence. I felt bad about that for quite a long while, but really, if one were to write from the point of view of a mass murderer, does that make one a mass murderer? The showgirl is, admittedly, a static, undeveloped character who is shown only as silly arm candy for Elvis. But her purpose in the poem, as an image, as a device, is to characterize Elvis's womanizing and to oppose his character to that of Uncle Ray. I'd love to hear some thoughts about this question, if you wouldn't mind posting a comment about it below. Oh, one other thing, the phrase "cruelly handsome" above was originally "brutally handsome" in the book. I think, though, that I unconsciously lifted that from the Eagles. Hence the alteration. Okay, that's all for now. Comment below, won't you? About anything, please. Thanks. Ingat. Added 5/8/2012: Yesterday, I mentioned that the Wojahn assignment had been published. Here's the scoop: "The Night Aunt Dottie Caught Elvis's Handerchief When He Tossed It from the Stage of the Sands in Vegas," a poetry-writing exercise by David Wojahn, from The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises From Poets Who Teach, edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twichell. Lots of great exercises in this book . . . worth picking up. DRAGONFLY FIRST CONTENTS PREVIOUS NEXT LAST