Five Poems From Ayn Frances dela Cruz

Flight

I sit on the MRT
while across me
a man winks and winks
signaling for love.

I look behind
wondering who his eyes sought.
I see nothing but a blur
of wings.

The man must be an angel
in love with angels
and I am caught
in their desperation.

Theirs was a true love story.
I wanted to be the girl
the man waits for
at the end of the station

but when the train stopped
the man got off
jumped from the platform
and boarded another.


Jarred

Inside the jar
the baby maybe thinks
about
being outside

Who knows
maybe its eyes closed
sees more than two
eyes wide open

skin all clammy-
like lizards
fingers and toes
bud-tight

I hate the thought
of flowering
because that would mean
eventual

withering,
Gray on gray
where before there was
whites and pinks

Blooms
Maybe the mother also
thought about it
preferring to keep

her baby perfect
All out there
Never coming though
Bus stops that go

only in one direction.


Beating the Drums

1. In an old house, a young man
in his hands, rough skin beating beneath his palm

2. Picture the man’s hair, long
entwined in his fingers are the tresses he used to love

3. He used to cover his face with his hair
now he covers the drums

4. Music catches the longness of time
he holds it in his hands, finger by finger

5. Every sound is a beat, every beat an echo
he strains to hear long-dead words

6. Skin to skin, he and the drum become one
echo by echo, every movement drums

7. Today, the drum beats as sadly as before
today his heart is a drum.


If these walls could talk

There’s a cat that lives
in my house.
I don’t see it
I only hear
the meows and yelps
that mark its catness.

So much louder,
so imaginatively egotistical
when it sees a mouse.

I search for its cat-eyes,
its cat-paws
its nine lives.

Wanting a taste of fang and claw
of whiskered fur,
sheathed velvet.

Too fast, our times never meet
I am stuck to a wall.
The cat lives
in a maze

forever going in and out
in and out
of my life.

And I a 10-inch nail,
a hair in its path,
will go on loving
behind cracks
from screen to screen
hole to hole

until it looks
and ravishes me.


Fruit

The apple you once wrote of
lies dead on the branch
its smell withered
as your withering arm
which reaches out to pluck
the fruit, yours or mine?

Its skin reveals more moisture
than your lips have known
the tongues that taste
are whorls in which
time’s fingerprints are revealed.

I who write this poem
write of you who eats the fruit
with each bite I trace you
wherever you are
shining.


Ainne “Ayn” Frances dela Cruz, 22, is a lecturer at De La Salle-College of St. Benilde and De La Salle University-Dasmarinas, in the Philippines. She is currently studying for her MA in Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines. She was a fellow for the 7th UST National Writers Workshop for English poetry. Her work has been published in Philippine Graphic, The Literary Apprentice Light, Philippine Panorama, Perlas ng Silangan, The Argotist Online, Paliparan, Nimrod International Journal: Crossing Borders Anthology and The Bathyspheric Review with work forthcoming in Blood Orange Review and Milflores Flash Fiction Anthology. A vegetarian-bum-poet, she spends her free time walking the streets of Cavite.

New Poetry From David McLean

It gives (ii)

It gives that which we make
ourselves out of a memory
today that lives a past we
touch now, and reach

as easily as these fingers this tree
beside me, and it is the real man
your father was, and not an imaged
he, you meet in a dream

with the mind’s cold arrow like
Husserls’ tower, and objects known
It gives to us on trust
that words may hold them

before the knowing soul,
all that It has shown,
under elision,
before all this discussion

elided the very giving
of the now, and we forget that It
just gives, no “It” is given, not a
God nor even the

Thrones that sing him
and the gravity of His
presentified sitting, It gives today
that tomorrow be true -

It always (gives) me you


It gives (iii)

It gives, just, not justly
It gives it is not the gift
or the giving, “It gives”
is always under this

allusive elision, It “is” not but
“It gives” is all the singing
It is not a Being
or a being but

“It gives” is the gift of
Beyng beyond the
lighted sun and behind
time. this that “It gives”

lies not but lies beyond
and is the exoteric life
of the epekeina tes ousias
that baulks at the Platonic logos

that poets seldom seem
to know, for children
are not given to thinking.
yet still It gives

and children always know
enough to listen and hold
what It shows in their clumsy
fingers. It gives the Nothing

that is given in the song
and gives the singing


David McLean was born in Wales and has lived in Sweden since 1987. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Parameter , Zygote in My Coffee, Erbacce, Sein und Werden, Venereal Kittens, Clockwise Cat, Mad Swirl, Lit Circus, Gold Dust, The Smoking Poet, Haggard and Halloo, BlazeVOX and previously in Zone. More information about Mr McLean is available on MySpace and at the Hecale portal.