Bottles at Sea

can toothaches send analog signals?

roof of my mouth unseparates raindrops: dressed the kiss with smog.

lidocaine remains, however— root canal has no signal.

wetness is a loan word of mermaid gingiva.

clench, scratch, snarl, eat; rational animal, sluiced the unsweet.

you cannot tongue-in-cheek out of this, go play leap-frog with a breath that bounces.

pattering pads— no, meat that matters.

bilateral heart, adrift on soft petroleum.

14:58: the musculature of umbilical cord

+ medical clamp.

15:00: when the Almagest is about matrilineal, womb-sized planets.

15:05: a cry pickled from a ribcage 400 million light years away.

15:15: diodes render blue the headbulbed mother.

> pockmarks, maroon / black. rosary beads …. metabolized.

15:20: umbilical cord is formalin-soaked, check on her belly.

15:29: Scorpio ascends 20 degrees into her abdomen.

15:34: Newton discovers three laws of motion sickness.

15:40: Mother Mary, metabolized.

15:50: Get one whole sheet of government paper, Panda gel pen.

15:57:

16:00: “Pure,” Milky Way announces.

16:02: Her heartbeat.

16:03:

16:04: God, four centimeters away.

with the moistened jaw of Mut, we cherrypicked the barebones of our dinner table.

pitchforks baptized in sunset-fires rattle the carousel seats, horsemeat well-done swarms tonsils to teeth. lungs are hardened and shaped like kakanin enclosed within overripe banana leaves.

lop the horses in digestible halves: plating. the rice picks the teeth apart: plaything.

the ride treads merry in spurs— deadbeat horses, whirling unperturbed. you are now meat simmered within mouths afraid to swallow. rice dithers about the fall down the stomach, clinging to toothy carousels calcified against their will.

who came first? womb, or God?

the dovetailing of mouth with both stomach and lungs: the fleshed knot of worship and hunger. here, you utter your first word: “Mama,” then you look at me.

i wrap your overgrowth in the greenest banana leaves.

Mut speaks through me: “You are saved, for later.”

I am pouring ocean in urns.

Dollops dolled blue drop onto their dewed lips, taut waterfalls. My knees are sediment-bruised, every sand-bathed speck flecks the skin like pecks. I overripen: sandpiper chorus out masts of throat, the chittering dives their way down to the bottom of the basin. It was a giggle, t’was a laugh— erupting like softened volcanoes.

Mildew, my friend of friends, crop the worry-line out your brows and listen to me.

The tide is lowered down to palm-sized sheaths. My hands are pruned thick with sunsets by the sea.

I knead igneous rocks into pebbles gentle.

Open your hand and receive me.

I would like to clear the water, free it of fickle basilisks.

The columbines brittle well into the twining dust of July, and you've fettered me to the purpling skin of your knees.

We sat by Baclaran’s little pulpit and opened our palms to receive lizard alms.

The pale brown scales swathed the skin of our hands;

sampaguita strings link

my teeth, together,

gurgling mysteries in oil spills.

In communion spittle, the disjointed altar orbits.

I am two luwalhati beads away from embedding pruned fingers into grotto ponds.

Lizards scorn the soles of their feet as their grip slips from the unchurched ceiling,

making way for August rain.

I. Tomorrow, we will exchange hands; dousing fairy-catching fires before coming to church. You cannot soak yourself in Ash Wednesday residue. You uncurl the other cheek with a quivered lip.

II. A nymph skitters mildly across the room. She falters, and denies the drink offered by tongue-contained hiss.

Faulty Salome flecks the womb with inward steps. Born again as a Venus, unbecoming,

Her heart is her mother’s, again.

III. The tongue pushes out the fat extruding from the other cheek. It sags and sags, downed with mildew. The body is a morose candle dimly lighting the path up the tower.

IV. Basilisks are tethered still to cathedral slippages.

The water is now dewormed.

The drinks spill the womb-water.

We extract the bones from Venus to tighten the shoes of the dancer. Her feet are slipping still ‘til she is christened in fire, again.

V. Hands were exchanged today. The fairies are godmothers to Christ-borns.

The foreheads are emulsified with ashy tinctures of water.

Our eyes abstain from the lizards.

Their gaze, poised, to architecture.

i fluff a hungry crow’s feathers to soften the blow. slowly, he flies away. i find his sun-baked carcass on our side of the road.

the farmer passes his straw hat around for a kilo of rice, or perhaps a centavo or two. hands dipped in arid soil, with ounces of neither nickel nor silver. he hitches jeeps and buses bound south, he walks back home, slippery-palmed.

there were no faces in the trike terminal today. the driver wipes his forehead, a headcount of yesterday’s coins. he envisions 6-year old bellies flattened to tabletops, little brown bodies strawmanned into furniture. he spends the night at the terminal once again.

i saw a mob of heads down the streets, bumping and drilling against each other. an old man shrivels beneath everyone else's knees. his wails weighed down by other grain-dead stomachs, blued cheeks echoing the color of abaca fiber they can't afford.

the noontime stillness of the copper field is damp with sweat, dankness. the crows overhead embroil the insular bambanti, who remained slack-jawed despite it all.

When the sun patters alongside scattered forecasts of rain, I inhabit the frogginess of it through mercy-tongues slippery enough for San Antonio’s shower blessing. Quiapo is candlelit with scores of scorches, with acidic rain brittling into slivering white onto the silver handlebars. The flames play leap-frog with raindrops across shops. I press against devotee chests and prayer quivers through throats. Acid rain is also holy water at some point in sinner physics. That I am: city-pest, run-on prayer, San Antonio proxy. I inhabit the pronged state of frogs. The riveting ribbiting distorts my graceless remarks.

clock hands are proboscis. folded white skin like seashells; feeling sandpaper and hearing seagulls. a grin that stretches beyond the edge of your eyes; cheeks hurting, swelling like fresh apples. hoping noon was longer than it should be. a snake in the tree. paradise hanging like a ghost. now walking on sand, only sand. wishing the sun was gone.

clock hands drink from my fingers. each birthday invite houseflies that bear the faces of people i knew. wingfolds were smiles that fell like freshly cut nails. fingers offered to strangers who had once carved themselves seats in the party of my mind. they have rounded bellies and their hands are full. my ribs jut out of my skin. i give thanks with them. they try to smile.

clock hands touch the shape of my skull and tell it promises. i fit my eyes inside every dead animal; i wonder what it’s like. dry throat carrying only the spine of an apple. epidermis thinning each step forward to tomorrow. seeing ribs puncturing the sand. hanging on to heartbeats. i am alive. i am alive.

clock hands draw wrinkles on my forehead and laughs. birthday suit does not reach my wrists and ankles anymore—i am younger than ever. pushing nails down to fingers and fixing postures each second. avoiding mirrors and putting faces of children on house guests. they have party hats for heads and we do little dances and sing to ourselves: we are not yet dead.

clock hands point me towards north. my shoulders rise higher than my head. a bob in my throat shaped like the weight of regret. bones become skin. sand swallowing my footprints. north is where? the sun had never moved; eternal noon. hollowing cheeks carving forbidden fruit. i am the paradise ghost.

clock hands hold my face in wait. folds pile across my skin until i am thinned to bones. grinning yet it’s never whole. grumbling from my stomach mistaken for my throat. gnawing ache in knowing you can never dance like you did before. i own nothing, except a gaping hole i have stitched in me called life. it is never filled; the seats are empty and i drop like a fly.

i.

the sun pulverizes the night into fine powders and smoke, so much so that the moon hangs its wounds in speckles of light through the haze of it all in hopes those who need to see it will do.

ii.

millennia-old dragon wounds inspiring poetry and downcast gazes following the trail of turquoise blood. there is a little girl in me whose fingertips are blue and she prays with black-tipped matchsticks, stolen coins, eyelashes, incense dust, the space allowed between palms, she found on the dejected sides of holy places. you could hear the misremembered mantras from the quiver of her voice. she is five years old and already knew there is something larger than the wiry frame she’s born in.

already, she knew how to bend her knees and beg for it.

iii.

you’d make mythologies out of anything, anything to help you escape.

in the darkness, i can forget about things bigger than me. in the darkness, the shooting stars go nowhere. in the darkness, the smoke holds no promises of castles in the sky or veiled fox brides between bamboos. in the darkness, there is no dialogue between mountaintops. in the darkness, i am no wanting creature. in the darkness, there are no teeth marks in the hand that feeds. in the darkness, there is no need to save me— no need to save me.

i am allowed hold my breath below the water this time.

iv.

make an abyss out of what’s between my ribs and throw your name into it. i will shake with every syllable like wind-stirred candlelight. i will know what revelation feels like and why there is so much to fear in love.

have you ever loved with a violence? is it possible to love without it?

v.

the heart wants what it wants and it wants what it isn’t. there is little difference between devotion and desperation; it’s meted out by how much blasphemy these sordid, wanting mouths would allow between their teeth. i grapple with the fact that faith was inevitable before it was necessary and how there’s always something to hold on to; to aspire to want. i want to be buried without your name falling from my lips because it would mean that you were big enough to be a truth i died for. if it is sacrilege, let it be. leave the wounds bleeding and let the sinners come to it thinking they’d be forgiven if they swipe their tongues against it. i swear i will love you enough to make you unholy. i know you’d love to see me try. until then i won’t apologize for anything until i’m able to say goodnight.