Memorabilia

Or what passes for it: A self-portrait by Joan Edades was among the things I carted away from the old house after the original couple of inhabitants passed, what could be oil or acrylic on canvas or manila paper, was iI Sakura pastel even, or the Guitar watercolors, or else the Crayola crayons and Mongol graphite.

The month when the rains begin, and now the portrait is looking askance us at the dining table, one silver eye a film of the past, a blurred hand in front possibly etching out the seeds from a grape to give to her son Christopher, who punches his fist into the other open hand and wants some Pepsi Cola. Years ago on a street called Maginhawa, 49.

Of course when we were children the painting might have inspired nightmares, the eyes constantly on the lookout for any misbehavior, the grape woman could smell truancy from a mile away. On his death bed the pure poet Juan Jose Jolico was told by his wife Augusta that the self-portrait of the mother of his sons was with me, and in the numbness of twilight he muttered, who cares, short of saying what are these ghosts doing so far away and alone together, and wanting some Pepsi Cola.

Cleaning out my desk the other day, I came across an old poem by AZ Jolico Cuadra, sent to the office for publication, preferably in the magazine, but this will do. Like the golden showers of Magin waiting to bloom, here it is (due to computer ignorance some words meant to be underlined weren’t, so our apologies to Chiqui):

A VILLANELLE (Improvisation IV) For Marieli & Agi & of course Kyle

Turning and

Turning: in the moving air!

Spinning into the swelling

Tide of noon,

Like a swift pirouetting

And blinking star-asterisk

Shimmering

Upon the whiteness

Of the barren land, —

The (Amethyst)

Astirred!...

Husked! Upon the cusp of the hour

And the daylong’s timing starstruck,

Minute-by-vanished minute fast

And dying, though there

Quick the time,

Lo! Quickest the seconds,

The day-moment that the (man) died…

Plangent minute minutest in his gelid

Manful hour, and godly, —

The, bright, lion, came,

Came, he, down, down,

Jacob’s, ladder, he,

So spectral so silent his

Footsteps,

And majestal, —

Came he down from

The laughing crucifixion!

So came he down to lay

Down the law forever

And once only, to

Lay claim to the sturdy

And stout spirit

— Gay gay in that gentlest manfulness day

Hour of the gadfly to his dreaming

Lives of beastfulnesses…

The blessedness O that is his

Sanctified soul:

Poet the warrior besieged

Even in (that)

Death (that) is all antlers!

— Saltimbanque sensualiq!

Beast and hissing hot, tiger

And grinning faun, —

Nay: Dove, Eagle, Lion,

Beleaguered of the gods,

And cosmic voyager of, —

(Nothing follows/ February 2004)