Chingbot Cruz

all words by conchitina cruz. not affiliated.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

Cruz, Conchitina. Authoring autonomy: The politics of art for art’s sake in Filipino poetry in English. 2016. State U of New York at Albany, PhD dissertation. Proquest, https://t.co/CltvrXUdCO.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

The sentence was fact and the window was aftermath. The sentence was fiction and the window was emergency.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

I have taken to alphabetizing the things in my kitchen. Thus colander next to coriander, dairy next to dishwashing liquid, ice next to insecticide.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

15.
a. despite that, look at how the stitched heart—
b. because of, look at how the cowering heart—
c. why never, why ever—what heart—

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

. . . It should be
enough, the eyes
in photographs restless,
the birds tugging themselves
off the surface
of teacups, the curtains poised
for migration, the roaches gone
to the neighbors.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

There have been ghosts, though never the right one.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

In Los Angeles, I am thought to be Mexican.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

Inside the story is a house, a bowl of fruit. Some students are braver than others. They write their names down.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

You might want to know that the road also leads to The Chapel of Ten Thousand Buddhas. The number alludes to infinity yet resists exaggeration. Each Buddha is the size of your thumb or the barrel of a gun, depending on where you stand.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

I don't listen to him as I make my way to this place, known to me now only as the road where you last stood.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

10.
It was water that killed him.
They drowned him in a bucket
because he never said a word.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

There was nothing to do but smoke by the bushes. There was nothing to do but forgive ourselves.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

Let's go, he says to her. She looks at her palm. Nothing there, then nothing quickly disappears inside her husband's hand.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

I am inclined to think that literature produced from this remarkable ordinariness is the condition of possibility for another world to occur, whose readjustment would transform notions of the literary work in ways beyond our current imagination.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

2.
I needed an excuse; I took my wine glass
to the kitchen. Nobody told me
to do the dishes.
The basin of water reeked of fish.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

She undressed it to the bone, prowling the alleys of its nerves and vessels with the certainty of a frequent visitor. She uttered the names of its smallest parts, the words sliding off her tongue.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

Bless the table with the mist of the right wood polish, let its face revel in the sweet clarity of natural light.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

Permit us to refresh your memory: what comes from heaven is always a blessing, the enemy is not rain.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

In Bellagio, I am mistaken for the writing resident‘s companion.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

In Bellagio, I am mistaken for the writing resident‘s companion.

[Chingbot Cruz @conchitinabot]

Between this page and that, a photograph she took / of their shadows, grazing a glass door—whose door and where / are they?