Camera 1
The clouds are like very small ribs, and I am embarrassed by them. I too am small and equally banded. There are very small throats in the ocean. The outrigger cuts divots in the water which spell nothing. Because of my hunger, this image is not a salve or a slave but a want. I want the boats to come back. Listen again. Throats are calling from the shoals. Meanwhile the clouds lineate the sound. The chords are to be played allegretto because the weather will not cooperate for long. A very thin boy is running through the shoal without a shirt. He is running to chase the boat. He is raising his foot from the ground and replacing it with another. Repeat this image. There is a splash and a cadence. My hunger is a scale for that sound.
Camera 7
In the six-million-gallon tank, light filters spectrally to the bottom. It is hundreds of ribbons unfurling into the ether. There is no end point—the ribbons are endless as is the bottom. Because there are no fish in the tank, there are no oxygen bubbles to exploit the frame. I am watching a sheet of blue paper uncurl as though on playback. There is no reference point, except for the clear roof of sunlight above like the afterlife. Once there were fishes, gilt like silver dollars slicing diagonals from tail to head. There were bellows, the gills opening and closing to draw the heart’s circular throb. And above in the sun, you could see the white bellies side-wind the names of fishes. There were ghosts arcing S’s to say nothing. To say hush.
Camera 8
I do not trust the sea. I do not trust it. Salt dots the lens glass. The descriptors for this are insufficient because there is also a kind of burning and a kind of warmth, which is not love but could be. Then spindrift. Then spray and flare of droplets and sun, a type of crescendo that is incapable of love. But to give itself to the air... there is something hopeless in that. Hopeless but untroubled like old houses.
Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press 2001, 2007), and the forthcoming Requiem for the Orchard (U. of Akron Press 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry chosen by Martìn Espada. He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at Western Washington University.
Visit him at http://oliverdelapaz.com
The clouds are like very small ribs, and I am embarrassed by them. I too am small and equally banded. There are very small throats in the ocean. The outrigger cuts divots in the water which spell nothing. Because of my hunger, this image is not a salve or a slave but a want. I want the boats to come back. Listen again. Throats are calling from the shoals. Meanwhile the clouds lineate the sound. The chords are to be played allegretto because the weather will not cooperate for long. A very thin boy is running through the shoal without a shirt. He is running to chase the boat. He is raising his foot from the ground and replacing it with another. Repeat this image. There is a splash and a cadence. My hunger is a scale for that sound.
Camera 7
In the six-million-gallon tank, light filters spectrally to the bottom. It is hundreds of ribbons unfurling into the ether. There is no end point—the ribbons are endless as is the bottom. Because there are no fish in the tank, there are no oxygen bubbles to exploit the frame. I am watching a sheet of blue paper uncurl as though on playback. There is no reference point, except for the clear roof of sunlight above like the afterlife. Once there were fishes, gilt like silver dollars slicing diagonals from tail to head. There were bellows, the gills opening and closing to draw the heart’s circular throb. And above in the sun, you could see the white bellies side-wind the names of fishes. There were ghosts arcing S’s to say nothing. To say hush.
Camera 8
I do not trust the sea. I do not trust it. Salt dots the lens glass. The descriptors for this are insufficient because there is also a kind of burning and a kind of warmth, which is not love but could be. Then spindrift. Then spray and flare of droplets and sun, a type of crescendo that is incapable of love. But to give itself to the air... there is something hopeless in that. Hopeless but untroubled like old houses.
Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press 2001, 2007), and the forthcoming Requiem for the Orchard (U. of Akron Press 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry chosen by Martìn Espada. He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at Western Washington University.Visit him at http://oliverdelapaz.com
