Mommy, I don't want to die

Death and danger are on my mind. On many lampposts throughout Kensington and Windsor Terrace, there are signs regarding a missing boy, 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky. That same boy was murdered and dismembered, parts of his body found Wednesday morning in a home just a few blocks away from where I live. This is the home of the suspect, 35-year-old Levy Aron, who confessed to the killing, the home that I have passed several times with my own children to and from daycare.

For the last couple of days, there have been scores of police, media, and general spectators around here. Helicopters have been loudly flying above. While my and the neighbors’ children run, scoot, skip happily up and down the block together, we parents and caretakers talk in quiet volume about this horrific event. We glance more frequently and watchfully at the children, our fears and concerns for their safety more pronounced. While I usually feel safe in this neighborhood, I realize there is no limit to human suffering and that it has no boundaries, does not discriminate and lives in any and every neighborhood. Though we all suffer, it is so unfair for a family to lose a child in this way. I feel such sorrow for the family and hope for strength and love to help them survive this loss.

I am glad the suspect is in custody and is being tried. Many families whose children go missing do not have such swift “closure”, a clear conclusion to their children’s fates. However, I still feel unnerved, the brutal death still hovering heavily in the air, the energy of the neighborhood dampened, my love for my children accentuated, my hope for their safety a mere gossamer thread, not strong enough to ensure that they will lead long, healthy lives void of severe tragedy.

I wonder if parents are more deeply unsettled by events like this; we must all have something in common, that our biggest fear is losing our children, a fear that never ends in life. It makes me better able to comprehend the worry my parents have had of my brother and me throughout our lives, and that even though we are well into adulthood, their worry for us hasn’t changed. It also makes me think that every birthday a child has really is something for parents to celebrate with great awe and appreciation.

Interestingly, I am not the only one with death on the mind. Lately my daughter who is 4 years old has been wondering about death, asking a variety of questions and making many comments about it. She has said things like, “When you die, your heart stops beating. I don’t want to die.” And “when you have a lot of birthdays, you die. I don’t want to have more birthdays and die.” My response is usually, “everything and everyone die,” and “nothing lasts forever” (then she asks what forever means and that is difficult to explain). Once she even expressed some adult rationalizing when she said that if no one died, there would be too many people on earth.

Most recently, she asked: “when we die do we come back?” This is a really hard question; I said that our bodies do not come back but that our spirit lives in others, then I tried to talk about compost. Again, I was not prepared with a great response. As a somewhat atheist with Buddhist tendencies whose only religion is poetry, I find it impossible to give one, straight-forward answer to this. She has even asked, “Mommy, what is kill?” I wonder if she has picked up this word from the news or from people speaking of Leiby Kletzky. I just give her the basic definition, to end a life, then this leads to the question of what is a life. How deeply should I be discussing these questions? I think they are such meaningful questions and should be explored little by little, pointing out different things here and there. I think I will focus on the question of what is life for a while. This will allow us to focus on the more positive aspects.

How else should I be approaching the topic of death though? Sometimes we use the book Nana Upstairs, Nana Downstairs by Tomie de Paola as an example of how death is a natural part of aging. This book centers around a young boy’s relationship with his grandmother and great-grandmother. And though the great-grandmother dies, de Paola does a great job of balancing deep love and aching sadness from losing someone while showing that the boy is still safe and cared for.

There are so many different forms of death, some I feel more comfortable confronting than others. I can point out the sunflower that died in its pot or the roses that perished in its vase. When we explain why we are vegetarian, we say we don’t like to eat animals that were killed. But I definitely will not talk to her about murder and the killing of children.

Instead, I think I should try to instill the importance of taking care of life in all its forms. She helps me water the plants, tries to avoid killing the ants outside. We try to be healthy by eating the right foods although she almost always refused to eat vegetables. I often incorporate her in my exercise and remind her that she needs to exercise every day. We talk about caring about others and being kind. She throws her trash in the garbage and doesn’t litter.

In play, my daughter lies down and says she’s dead. Then I have to try different ways of bringing her back to life: kissing, tickling, or using a magic potion. Having her father play the prince who kisses her to life always resuscitates her.

I wonder what other children her age say and ask about death. I wonder if we have allowed her to watch too many movies where death is portrayed in a violent and fantastical way. She has watched Star Wars 4-6, Finding Nemo, Princess Mononoke, all with graphic scenes of dying and killing. Have we exposed her to these films too early? Is there such thing as exposing children too soon to death? Perhaps my daughter will be less naïve and vulnerable as she gets older. I think it’s important that she is aware of different aspects of the world.

It seems like she has a healthy view of death so far. As she gets older, this topic will become more difficult and complicated and that I should encourage her to further think and question rather than trying to give her the solid, utmost definition of life and death because I don’t think there is one.

Any recommendations on texts or questions on this topic would be greatly appreciated.

Revisiting the Moon

Almost an hour of sponging and rinsing every food crusted fork, glass, bowl, and pan that has been scattered across the table and counter tops. My feet are tired, the White Stripes’ Elephant is ceasing to sustain me. The oily stove top still needs to be wiped. Need to prepare meals for Emerson to eat at daycare, wash and dry his bottles.

After every dish is drip-drying on the rack, I take a pitcher full of plant-safe, recycled water and open the door to the terrace. I step onto the black slates and am stilled and quieted.

The haloed moon shines above the four-storey brick in front of me, brightening Janet’s garden below, her hostas and hydrangea glowing. I peer up for a few breaths until the screen door snaps shut. It is enough time to be revitalized, to reconnect with my senses. I water the wilting tomato plants with extra care, the pour of water reflecting the waxing light.

This is a rare moment, being moonstruck. In the evenings, the tasks of putting the day’s disorder into some order take over the body and mute the senses. I don’t often get a moment alone with the moon.

But here I am. Nourishing the potted plants, being nourished by the pouring light.

My hunger for sleep subsides. My will to stand alone under the moon and write is revitalized.

Months have passed since I have written on this blog. It has been hibernating during the months of teaching full time and parenting. Now that I am on summer vacation, fewer tasks need to get done in a day and there is more internal and external space for writing. Already I have a list of five topics I want to write about:

-Just Kids

-Spanish picture books I just borrowed from the library

-garden of poetry - poems that complement my plants and flowers

-Jazzy's curiosity with death

-getting Emerson to gain despite his allergies

Upset Press Poetry Reading on December 12th

Despite unfriendly wind and rain, a group of poets and a few of their countless followers gathered together to inhale and exhale verse in the cozy back room at Zora Art Space. It was a reunion of old and new members of our poetry group that has been meeting with varying degrees of regularity for the last seven years. Because of offspring, demanding spheres of our professions, accidental injuries, and general fluctuations in our lives, we meet with limited frequency. Nonetheless, when we reunite, we are a tempest of artistic merriment and bawdy humor, finding stimulus in each other's words.

The reading was organized by Zohra Saed who realized shortly before the reading that she had to read at a different event and was thus physically absent though we are used to her magical invisibility which serves to enhance her mystery and power (thanks Z for bringing us together!). Here is the line-up of that night: 1) Robert Booras who resurrected after not reading in public for more than 3 years; 2) Karen Pittelman who proved to be an extraordinary MC; 3) Jenny Husk who left her two kids at home in Connecticut and took several trains to get to Brooklyn; 4) me, Denise Galang, who was inspired by Jenny to read some of my breast poems; 5) Rachel Rear who read a funny, newly-composed relationship-with-poetry poem; 6) Sean O'Hanlon whose poetry resonates with irreverent reverence (and I am not just saying that because he is my babies' daddy); and 7) Nicholas Powers who was unable to attend because of an ankle injury; however, we took turns reading poetry from his book, Theater of War.

Here are the poems I read:

“The Startling Reality of Things”°

Put down the Post or Sun. Read me instead:

timeless, unrestricted by column widths,

editor’s decisions, federal dials.

I am the prisoner stripped and ravished,

my genitals helplessly stroked by invading soldiers.

I am a mother coming home from market

finding my sons and daughters buried

in the concrete ruin of my ancestral home:

aflame, guided missile blasted

into bright afternoon play room.

I am gashes left in memory

when in war’s games

children’s beds become graves.

My rage soaks the soil.

More rage sprouts.

Carry me in your shirt pocket or purse

around your neck like a talisman

and you’ll have the gift of seeing

past stiff indifferent stares on

stalled rush-hour trains,

past office dividers, computer screens,

backyard gates, country boundaries:

to find faces reconciled

by the same frustrations and fates,

our tongues broken down to breath.

Take me to your ear when walking,

sitting on a lawn chair, lying on a cot in winter.

Hear me in machines’ heartbeats:

black smoke exhaled from rusted lungs,

the heater’s rattling drum.

Take me home with you

after a night of sipping cocktails

caress and undress me

fondle my words in your mouth

consonants like teeth, vowels like water.

Marry me and we will nourish each other,

swallow every morsel of our meals,

conceive new visions:

all our ravings and rapture flickering

always waking, always waxing.

When I am part of your morning rituals,

percolate and pour, I’ll undo your sleepy strings.

Spread on toast like fresh fruit spread

I’ll sweeten the bitter residue of waking.

Clarity – I’ll brim in your breakfast room…

---

° Title of Fernando Pessoa’s poem (under heteronym Albert Caeiro)

Pomegranates in Winter

Fall

Fifty miles of speeding asphalt and deciduous trees on the I80

and I am at the Delaware Water Gap.

Standing at this break in land, I almost lose my footing on solid soil

and fall into this dammed river between states. My fate –

perhaps. The first of my lineage of restless women born of coconut palms

and orchid petals, caught in the whims of typhoons, riding the easterly winds

to America – to be buried in the bones of this bucolic nowhere.

This whirling autumn daze may be my death some day.

Although I love hearing the crick-crack of twigs beneath my feet

and catching crimson maple leaves between my hands,

I do not want to be an oak or goose or sheep in winter horizons that bear no fruit.

I am tired of driving down highways and being met with ice.

What if I freeze into these woods, crack at the hooves of a deer?

Will I forget about my thirst for buko juice?

Sonnet to Silence

Sonnets on Striking

Sonnet to Bubbles

Excerpt from Breast Series

In Between Sleep and Not

(I wrote this poem before the reading while Sean dropped the kids off at their grandparents' house on Staten Island)

Sketches of a poem hidden

among the wreckage of lost

items: brown spiral notebook,

glitter glue cap, tape dispenser,

the minutes I could have turned into verse

but instead turned into

week’s worth of minestrone soup.

I shall never get out of this!

The cycle of building and demolishing

and rebuilding the sticks

of sanity that get huffed

and puffed away by my children’s

hungry cries, students’ stories in need of resolution,

dishes and stove damning my neglect.

What happens in this loss?

My son scoots onto my lap

with a pop-up book,

daughter draws black, abstract flowers

for every member of the family,

my anger over her earlier nagging

to play on my computer dissolving…

While zygotes of poems lie hidden

between pages,

slumber in synapses,

I, like Plath, am trying to collect my strength

to connect the many pieces of me,

broken and dispersed,

relics within the wool of the rugs.

Kundiman-Verlaine Poetry Reading

On Sunday, September 12, I read at a Kundiman-hosted reading with two amazing poets, Oliver de la Paz and Kristin Naca. Despite the heavy downpour, many of my favorite people made the trip to the Lower East Side to see me read. I also met other awesome people such as Joseph Legaspi, co-founder of Kundiman and one of the hosts of the reading. I felt really lucky to be there and filled up on blissful, inspiring vibes to last me a while. Although I wish I could have had more time to practice reading, I was happy with the poems I read.

Here are the poems I read on that night:

Breast Series I

Origin

They rose from the surface

of my chest

like unwelcome ant hills.

While I showered

I tried to push them back in

saying a prayer:

Dear God -

I hate these things.

Please don’t let them grow anymore.

Plateau

For two decades

they lived under cotton skin

and bras that were too big.

Hermits in school uniforms

or thrift store finds

I forgot about their existence

except when they came out

to be kissed and caressed

by a boyfriend.

They were like board games

I occasionally took out

to pass time and be amused.

Ant Hills

I saw them as too small

and too low on my torso.

They drooped like rabbit ears.

No longer believing in prayer

I wore a padded bra

under my Thai silk wedding dress.

Waxing

After Costa Rica, my breasts

began growing out of their bras.

Like the moon from new to full

filling up with light.

Breast Series II

First Time

In the hospital room

where my baby sleeps

in a plastic box,

I learn how to use

my breasts. At first

it is like losing my virginity –

my bare breasts feel cold

and shy. I do not know

what to do with our bodies.

I hold her awkwardly on a pillow,

tickle her chin so she opens wide

then aim my breast into her mouth.

There is no pain but warmth

of her skin and wonder:

am I doing this right?

Gold Mine

Strong as flexed muscles

solid as blocks of gold

full as the city reservoir.

They are sun, rain, and earth,

fertile valley feeding my daughter’s

blood, bones, and breath.

I hold her against my chest

watch her double in length,

walk, talk, and feel her way through.

Drip

There is a balance

between breasts –

when one is feeding

the other oozes

with maternal loving,

eager to give.

Either I catch it

and save it for later

or it puddles and drenches

the baby’s shirt.

The Cape

In restaurants, friends’ houses,

bookstores, I feed her

in dark or shaded corners.

Tan cape over my torso,

I unlatch the flap on my

nursing bra or tank,

subtly lift the carefully chosen

shirt, hide the baby and breasts

under layers of cotton.

Even at the Mermaid Parade

where women wear sequins tails

and glitter on their breasts

or paint their bodies red

and breathe fire,

I cover my naked skin.

Supply

At work between classes

I pump milk in a small room

behind a Do Not Enter door.

With one hand I hold the pumps in place,

with the other I turn pages,

type short emails, or eat a sandwich.

After, I store the milk in the fridge,

rinse out the parts in the bathroom,

then feed children sonnets and Socrates.

Breast Series III

Harvest

She is fifteen months

can break off bread

with her own teeth,

drink with her own hands,

pick up peas with her fingers,

eat from soil’s bounty.

She can taste with her own tongue,

no longer needs me to be

her metaphor for nourishment.

I am harvested.

Pasture

I am keeping my breasts hidden –

even when she says “ilk, ilk”

and pulls on my shirt.

Instead I hold her close

and give her a bottle

of another mammal’s milk.

As she holds the bottle

between her palms,

she pinches the skin on my belly.

Never again will she look up

from my breast, say “good”,

and continue suckling.

Overripe

Like two swollen summer fruit

I squeeze out their juice

watch it disappear in the heat.

Every day I watch them dwindle

the liquid reduced to droplets

leaving only the skin.

Every day I think:

“what if I nurse her

just one more time?”

Waning

The moon’s round light

is being squeezed out of the sky

diminished to a crest

then to memory.

Breast Series IV

Second Season

In bare-branch November,

my earth is tapped, two wells

begin to fill for another.

First the heat in my hips

melts, breaks me

until a body erupts

spilling cries and fluid

from the narrow gorge of my pelvis

to the pillow of my outer womb.

Only my hungry breasts

quiet his wet wails

and quivering lips.

Song of my Suso

On my bed or rocking chair,

while I sleep or eat

chances are nagsususo ako.

Suso, suso, suso is all I ever hear.

Right when I am going to take a bite

Of my bread, my mother says,

“Umiiyak si Emerson. Pasusohin mo.”

Mid-sentence in a conversation,

my daughter beckons:

“Mom, Emerson wants your suso.”

While I am taking a shower,

my husband calls, “I, I mean Emerson,

wants your suso.”

Between snores, the baby’s wordless cry

pierces through doors and walls,

lifts moon’s curtain from my eyes.

I shuffle to his crib, lift,

carry him to the creaking chair,

and hold him to my suso,

his moon in the night.

Mamma

Too early, I nurse the baby

in bed, slouched, with eyes closed,

curses hammering in my head.

My daughter gallops in

jumps on the bed

with her own baby boy.

He cries: “Wah, wah, wah!”

She lifts up her shirt,

holds his face to her ribs, singing,

“He wants my suso!”

As she bobs and bounces beside me,

I straighten up and smile.

Side by side, we feel the tug

Of need and love,

Our mammal roots.

Three Moons

Walking along a disappearing path,

the sea caresses me with warm fingers.

I breathe in the depth of cielo and estrellas.

Somewhere in this celestial mind

I reach horizons.

This is the nightscape – el nacimiento

of language, ang balík sa simulâ where I can look up

and say: Sana ngayón ay ang kalibúgan ng buwán,

and be laughed at.

“Anó sinábe mo?”

I wanted to say I wish the moon were full.

Instead, I said I lust for the moon.

But that’s also true. I do lust

for ang kabilógan ng buwán,

the full moon, la luna llena,

three satellites holding me together

gravity and tides

silver spheres

navigating my passages.

My Mother Cooks Pancit

She crushes cloves of garlic in a marble mortar

as if they were the cells spreading in my father’s throat.

Flame pulses beneath the wok.

She pours in oil, tests with a few pellets of her sweat.

Hot as his fever, the yellow liquid crackles, spits.

She stirs in roots, carrots, string beans and shrimp.

Green and orange scents color father’s frailness

(drain full of hair, days of chemo).

With kalamansi juice, patis, salt,

she seasons our sorrows, awakens our palates.

Rice noodles seeped in wooden bowl of jasmine water,

translucent, soft, drained then mixed in.

Her tenderness rises into the light,

thin white threads steaming into lace.

Kaen na she calls.

Stairs creak, slippers shuffle. We sit around the table,

eat to the hymn of silver forks and porcelain bowls.

Each forkful a surge of flavor:

my mother’s faithful hands.

Arroz Caldo

In my left arm, I am holding a hundred degree,

coughing child, head leaning against my shoulder.

In my right hand, steel knife

roughly cuts organic garlic, onion, and ginger.

Pieces scatter on the ground.

I am making my version of arroz caldo,

the rice soup my mother used to make

when we were fevered and ill:

golden broth from achuete, lumpy rice,

bite size pieces of tripe and chicken,

scallions, browned garlic, and lemon juice for garnish.

Now I am the mother in the kitchen.

Oil and salt, I sizzle the roots in wok.

I stir with wooden spoon,

adjust the child on my hip.

Add short grain brown rice,

firm tofu broken up with my right hand,

quarts of water and un-chicken bouillon cubes.

Cover. Simmer for an hour.

***

While we wait to eat,

sit in recliner in the living room,

Jazzy leaning against my torso

still in the arc of my left arm,

our legs under a black, tasseled Navajo blanket.

On the screen, two fish inside the cavernous mouth of the whale

hang on the cliff of its tongue:

-It’s time to let go

-How do you know something bad isn’t going to happen?

With trust and instinct, they let fall

into quaking pit, not knowing

if they will be food or free.

Outside the pot, the hallway, the windows, this chair,

inside our shifting bodies, there will be times

when we are swallowed. For now,

the scent and softening of simmering rice

and the certainty of this stew.

Motherless Christmas

On Christmas with my mother in ‘Pinas

the lights are dim, the kitchen is empty,

and no grain of rice, noodle, or lumpia

to taste. In the fridge, moldy adobo

in plastic quarts, tomatoes festering,

piles of pigs’ feet, bacon, hard loaf of bread.

It’s just a treeless, wreathless, giftless day.

Empty, carpeted space is our shrine.

Nativity scene hidden in garage

while evergreens whip against shutters, bring

wind in. Instead we abandon the house,

eat out: asados, maduros, rice, beans

make us quietly crave her steaming plates

that warm us like round, fresh lumpia wrappers.

Neglectful Gardener

Though the seeds I’ve sown in paper squares

Never flourished into fruit-bearing plants

And the potted begonia from the

Teacher-appreciation lunch is now

A seer, brown-edged casualty of my

Neglect, I have managed to boil many

Boxes of Annie’s macaroni shells

Turning white dust into a creamy sauce,

A meal my daughter devours with hands.

Even though the last sprig of cilantro

In the wooden herb box succumbed to weeds,

My son can worm around on his belly

Climb onto my lap and pull up my shirt

To harvest the fruit that keeps him growing.