American Poets in the 21st Century
Page 43
In the poem “ginen aerial roots,” the last poem of [saina], Perez develops this idea. He writes, “because our bodies are sixty percent water” and, in the next stanza, “because our blood nearly eighty percent water” and, then, “because our lungs nearly ninety percent water” and, finally, “because oceania is five parts land to a thousand parts water.”18 The body is water; breath emerges from an organ composed of nearly all water; Oceania is “a thousand parts water.” Water is more body than the body, it is the origin of breath, and landmass rises from and is dwarfed by the immensity of water. Citing only a few of this poem’s lines is an injustice to the depth of the poem. However, it does lucidly portray and demonstrate the coincidence of water to the body, body to locale, and locale to water.
Returning to the first poem of from unincorporated territory [saina], “from sourcings,” the poem’s last lines read, “will continue after in / all afters.”19 If read as completing the poem’s thought, this line suggests that the bracketed “[we]” will exist after time itself, history, has ended. To expand this reading, one may note that the italicized “in” ends the second to last line. The “[we]” “will continue” after in this ending “in.” If this “in” echoes with the force of the previous occurrences of italicized “in,” then the bracketed “[we]” continues in that radical composite of ancestors, descendants, histories, words, locales, homes, and bodies. By not reading the bracketed “[we]” into this line, the line’s concluding “in” is the site of the “will continue.” That is to say, the “in” is the essence of continuity; it is, grammatically, the future perfect tense. The “after” of this line is complicated as the preposition is attempting to spatially and temporally locate an object noun (if we see the “in” as the object the “after” points toward) that exceeds the preposition. The object itself is the subject: it is the pre-position.
The last line of the poem, “all afters,” appears, if we read it as the concluding line, to say that this monadic Being of ancestry, environment, culture, self, other, and so on, will continue in and beyond all historical “afters”—that is, after colonialism, after military occupation, after self, after culture, after “all afters.” It is prior to history and, as such, after all histories; it is precedent to the positioning of the preposition. Just as the substance of the body, of the lung, of geography, is framed by and through water, so too is time a composition of water: a fluidity exceeding the delimitations of empire and colonized histories.
What “echoes across waters”? An event horizon composed of water itself; an event theoretically counterpart to the fatal ascent over and through the tidal pull of a dead star; within this trembling of the spatial-temporal, where light cannot escape the siren’s black song and where gravitational fields contract, perception’s contingent grasp on reality slips, decolonized, and is exposed as illusory. In water, laid bare before imperial history’s phantasmagoric contingency, the universe’s instability expands: in the particular Chamorro epistemology of water is the re-possiblizing of the diasporic within, while being simultaneously outside, the historical moment of the colonizer.
Being both within and outside the historicity of the colonizer, it is vital to understand that Perez’s epistemology of water is not an abstract, decentered, poststructural void; while its aesthetics engage with those ideas, it is also a critique of the ethics of an easy plurality, light relativism, or a purely theoretical space of radical openness; what differentiates this epistemology and aesthetics is its recognition of, participation with, and judgment of the very real political, economic, and historical catastrophes the Chamorro [have] experience[d] and live[d] through. Perez’s tidal poetics, in its timelessness, is grounded in the historical violence against the Chamorro by the various colonizers. This is the importance of “hanom” being both the Chamorro word for “spring” and the highly specific event of the Hanom Chamorro’s rebellion against the Spanish in the seventeenth century: “hanom” as the spring of potential is, in part, history itself rebelling against the colonizer’s determinate account of history; it differentiates the histories, politics, aesthetics, and economies organizing our earthly sovereignties. In stepping beyond or outside the colonizer’s finite historical framing, the idea of “Hanom” shifts human engagement with the world from the perception of the world as thing to be used, a tool of human utility, toward the infinite whereby one becomes generative, creative, and self-differentiating: one discloses the unknown histories hidden within the finite imperialist map.
Operating in such disclosure and differentiation is a cosmic nudity where words, worlds, and histories knot and revel while unraveling—a profundity precedent to reason. Here, unprecedented and pregnant with itself, for Perez, a kind of freedom is opened; that is to say, freedom’s freedom unveils in/as poetry, long before the electorate’s counsel for liberties. Of vast importance to this conception is how Perez, in citing and collaging from official political and historical documentation of the catastrophes that the Chamorro have suffered, achieves a reunification with Chamorro epistemologies through those selfsame colonial ideologies of violence and separation. This act itself is an ethical practice of the integration of difference.
Craig Santos Perez’s “water” echoes itself through itself to the gateway disclosing the theoretical foundations of tidal origins. What is significant about this “water” is that it recognizes apparent history and, in this politicized historical reality, opens into an immanence that transcends itself. For Perez, it is in the “in” and the “from” established by the colonizer and imposed by the colonized that the preposition becomes the pre-position, the position before positioning; hanom is, for Perez, the Chamorro poetics of water, a tidal poetics of “saina” whereby “our bodies [are] blessed with / ‘coconut oil’ ‘rain water’ ‘charcoal’ ‘white lime’ ‘soil’ ‘palm leaves’ ‘sea water’—.”20
NOTES
1. Craig Santos Pérez, from unincorporated territory [guma’] (Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2014); from unincorporated territory [saina] (Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2010); from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Kāne‘ohe, HI: Tinfish Press, 2008). As this anthology went to press, the fourth volume in the series, from unincorporated territory [lukao] (Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2017), was published, as was a revised edition of the first volume (Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2017).
2. See John Carlos Rowe, “‘Shades of Paradise’: Craig Santos Perez’s Transpacific Voyages,” in Archipelagic American Studies, ed. Brian Russell Roberts and Michelle Ann Stephens (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017); Joseph Harrington, “The Politics of Docupoetry,” in The News from Poems: Essays on the 21st-Century American Poetry of Engagement, ed. Jeffrey Gray and Ann Keniston (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016); Hsuan L. Hsu, “Guåhan (Guam), Literary Emergence, and the American Pacific in Homebase and from unincorporated territory,” American Literary History 24.2 (2012); and Paul Lai, “Discontiguous States of America: The Paradox of Unincorporation in Craig Santos Perez’s Poetics of Chamorro Guam,” Journal of Transnational American Studies 3.2 (2011).
3. Perez’s tidal poetics might also be read through the lens of Kamau Brathwaite’s “tidalectics.” See Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey, Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007). Brathwaite’s “tidal dialectic,” DeLoughrey writes, “resists the synthesizing telos of Hegel’s dialectic by drawing from a cyclical model, invoking the continual movement and rhythm of the ocean.” “Tidalectics,” she continues, “foreground alter/native epistemologies to western colonialism and its linear and materialist biases” (2).
4. Perez, [saina], 63.
5. Oscar Salemink, The Ethnography of Vietnam’s Central Highlanders: A Historical Contextualization, 1850–1990 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003), 1–3.
6. Peter Pels and Oscar Salemink, eds., Colonial Subjects: Essays on the Practical History of Anthropology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), vii.
7. In their “Five
Theses on Ethnography as Colonial Practice,” in History and Anthropology 8 (1994), Pels and Salemink are robust in emphasizing that “the ethnographic text needs to be understood through an analysis of the historical context of its production: the fieldwork process [is] […] itself a symptom of the accessibility of others created by European colonialism” (17).
8. Perez, [saina], 63; Charles Olson, “Projective Verse,” in Postmodern American Poetry, ed. Paul Hoover (New York: Norton, 1994). Olson writes, “From the moment he ventures into FIELD COMPOSITION—puts himself in the open—he can go by no track other than the one the poem under hand declares, for itself. Thus he has to behave, and be, instant by instant, aware of some several forces just now beginning to be examined” (614).
9. Olson, “Projective Verse,” 617.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 621.
12. Perez, [saina], 63.
13. Perez, [saina], 13.
14. See Guampedia, guampedia.com.
15. Perez, [hacha], 12.
16. Ibid., 12.
17. Olson, “Projective Verse,” 616.
18. Perez, [saina], 129–30.
19. Ibid., 13.
20. Ibid., 80.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works by Craig Santos Perez
BOOKS
from unincorporated territory [hacha]. Kāne‘ohe, HI: Tinfish Press, 2008; rev. ed. Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2017.
from unincorporated territory [saina]. Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2010.
from unincorporated territory [guma’]. Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2014.
from unincorporated territory [lukao]. Richmond, CA: Omnidawn, 2017.
CHAPBOOKS
All with Ocean Views. Overhere Press, 2007.
Constellations Gathered along the Ecliptic. Shadowbox Press, 2007.
from Preterrain. Big Game Books, 2007.
Preterrain. Philadelphia: Corollary Press, 2008.
EDITED VOLUMES
Chamoru Childhood. Chamoru Anthology Series Volume 1. Ed. Victoria Leon Guerrero, Michael Lujan Bevacqua, and Craig Santos Perez. El Cerrito, CA: Achiote Press, 2009.
BARBARA JANE REYES
POEMS
FROM Poeta en San Francisco
[objet d’art: exhibition of beauty in art loft victorian claw tub]
he found her, guttered, fish-hook positioned. palsied arms squeezing
mottled fishtail he thought almost fetal. febrile she felt his face
eclipsed sun his halo at best. joyless, cradled old faerie tale, this half-
dead thing little foundling. but city rain gutters’ unspeakable odors,
her hair matted nest of gems and dying creatures. he wrapped her
in newspaper he brought her home traced spider veins’ routes where
needles went in islands of abscess where flesh refused to mend itself.
he suspected she had no navel. he put his hand there to find what else
she lacked.
she has no memory now, the order in which events transpired: deposit
specimen laid porcelain bed iodine smarting contusions expensive
soles clicking waxed hardwood renovated rocksalt bathwater
proportions tested flashbulb popping ceaseless yellow afterimage
sandalwood combs fighting ebony tangles exquisite centerpiece
erupting stomach’s detoxification applause and eyes always eyes offset
against vaulted ceilings she does not remember singing.
[Kumintang]
That blank space on your map, that’s where I was born.
The more blank your map, the more darkness for exploration.
Gold stars pinned to your chest for every military and civilian
slaughter, for every child defiled, for every rice field set ablaze,
for every leveled village, for every racial slur coined
in these blank spaces on your map, for every new howling
wilderness, for every incineration of flesh, for every gasoline
victory smell in the morning. Counting kill, your body is lost.
There is no hope for your spirit. Don’t try. Shit. Don’t dream.
Can you appreciate the neither here nor there of it all?
Think how soft now, your rot of a body. Your fucking filth.
Blood and whiskey, some homecoming.
[why choose pilipinas?]
the answer is simple, dear ally. the pilipinas are the finest group of
islands in the world, its strategic position unexcelled by that of any
other global positioning. they afford means of protecting american
interests which, with the very least output of physical power, have
the effect of commanding position for hostile action.
he who promises to return, repeatedly returns. ankle-deep in his
reflection pool, his bronze statue smokes a good bronze corncob pipe.
his commander-in-chief self-names doctrine: headquarter force
containment of communism. the pilipinas play key logistical roles
supporting service fulcrums of american indochina penetration. fleets
and stations deploy venereal disease; deflowered local catholics satiate
battalions, all vietnam bound. in short, the pilipinas are custom tailored to fit your diverse needs.
[why choose pilipinas, remix]
the answer is simple, my friend. pilipinas are noteworthy for their
beauty, grace, charm. they are especially noted for their loyalty. their
nature is sun sweetened. their smiles downcast, coy. pilipinas possess
intrinsic beauty men find delightful and irresistible. pilipinas are
family-oriented by essence, resourceful, devoted. what’s more, english
is the true official language of the pilipinas, so communication is
uncomplicated. and even though some believe in the old ways,
the majority of the pilipinas are christian, so you are assured they
believe in the one true god you do. foreign, but not too foreign, they
assimilate quickly and they do not make a fuss. in short, the pilipinas
are custom tailored to fit your diverse needs.
now will that be cash or charge?
[galleon prayer]
pilipinas to petatlán
she whispers desert trees, thorn-ridged, trickling yellow candles; roots spilling snakes’ blood
virgin of ribboned silk; virgin of gold filigree
one day’s walk westward, a crucifix of fisherman’s dinghy dimensions washes ashore
virgin adorned in robe of shark embryo and coconut husk
she fingers mollusks, wraps herself in sea vines
virgin of ocean voyage peril
she wills herself born
virgin of mud brick ruins; virgin of sandstorm echoes
she is saint of commonplaces; saint of badlands
virgin of jade, camphor, porcelain; virgin of barter for ghosts
penitents, earthdivers of forgotten names praying skyward
virgin of scars blossomed from open veins of fire
she slips across the pacific’s rivers of pearldiving children
virgin of copper coins
she is bloodletting words, painting unlikeness
virgin of anachronism
children stained with berries and rust, their skeletons bend, arrow-tipped; smoke blurs eyes’ edges
virgin of mineral depletion; virgin of mercury
at other altitudes she remembers to breathe; a monument scraping cloud
virgin of tin deposits extracted from mountains
these are not divinations; there is goldleaf about her skin
virgin of naming and renaming places in between
[ave maria]
our lady who crushes serpents
our lady of lamentation
our lady full of grace whose weeping statues bleed,
our lady who makes the sun dance, pray for us
o
ur lady of salt pilgrimage
our lady of building demolition
our lady of crack houses
santa maría, madre de dios, pray for us sinners
our lady of unbroken hymen
preteen vessel of god’s seed,
your uterus is a blessed receptacle.
our lady of neon strip joints
our lady of blowjobs in kerouac alley
our lady of tricked out street kids, pray for us
blessed mother of cholo tattoos
you are the tightest homegirl
our lady of filas and lipliner
our lady of viernes santo procession
our lady of garbage-sifting toothless men
our lady of urban renewal’s blight
pray for us sinners ipanalangin n’yo kaming makasalanan
now and at the hour ngayon at kung
of our death kami ay mamamatay
amen
[prayer to san francisco de asís]
the brothel girl in the mirror coos back at me.
she reminds me not to curse her ill fate, for
in the mirror, nimbus brilliance. outside her
door, his sandpaper hands down his pants.
why his grunts still startle us, after all this time:
quiet, a phantom limb, its itching quite unbearable.
even now, amputation’s romance. she lays
to rest our missing pieces, tucks them in, and
whispers a prayer. on the ninth day,