AUSTERE REX GAMAO

Do Birds In Poems Have Days Off?

Do they look at porn after a week of
Spreading their wings and getting shot at
With fucking love arrows? Birds don't swear
In poems. They can't. Beaks forever open, a seed birthing

In place of tongue. A seed-chick hybrid, wouldn't
That be fun? Fruit Birds? Veggie Birds? Birds think
Of entrepreneurial ventures like that.
Birds think of apps about Bird-watching after

Singing verses full of carnations in classrooms. Decent
Acoustics. Could use some more harmony. Harmony and Birds.
Looks cliche but even Birds can't resist blinding
Light, halos, and tapestries. Birds make tapestries of poems.

Birds run multi-million pesos companies just churning out
Clothes with prints of aggressive poetry. My heart has wings
Like a bird. Birds get scared of lines like that. Imagine how
Out of breath they are in airport poems. Do Birds

Cry to their poem mothers about the tough day they had as
A metaphor for a feather? Does that unfortunate bird
Go insane being a feather? I would. I'd fail to
Go home to pretend-pray the rosary as an arm hair.

Can you believe a human being
Is writing about the labor code of Birds? We're selfish,
Eating up precious lines and crying about it. Birds are
into politics. No One, not one Bird dislikes talking

About politics. Birds always talk about an uprising.
That's probably a good Metaphor. Birds uprising?
Do birds think about consciously using
Metonymy? A job report fluttering with

Metonymy. Is flutter a metonymy for a sick world?
Birds have global warming conspiracies too, defacing
Dictators, and tribal tattoos. Birds have utopias. Horizon
Utopias full of dizzying flock to flock wing-holding,

Interluded preening, then laughing at the argument
Against. Who knew it could shimmer like that?
Birds have more religions than people. You can't not
Have a religion when you're a Bird. When you're from the

Sky, you need a my-guy. That's a real saying. Birds disrupt
Stanzas with this saying. Even here.

Fuck!

That was a Bird saying fuck. Not me. Do birds renew
Their contracts? I hope my Birds won't be
Stubborn and take their days

Off and fly straight along the sky like
Jets. I swear to god if I find any of them in other poems
Part-timing as a badge of honor, I'll go back to my symptoms.

Time of the Flood
              from With Decade

I

The edges of it are crispy and gravity loves to nibble on them until husbands bow out of the line

II

every direction looks different in the water even above it capture looks more holy like it can just go through a house and leave it knowing insistence in repetitions the refrigerator is the first to make it to high ground

III

its still fresh mouth offers a kind memory along the gated fence of the canal a balled-up paper is thrown on the water to commemorate the moment of dissolution beams of light catches muddy feet the rain like ghosts dumbfounded by their sharpness most of what the men carry is a little cry of remembering a recurring flood and the women carry the origin of water their seashell wind chimes folded for next emergencies

IV

a mimic of what the universe can accomplish the mechanism under the roil of soft ruins everywhere on top of each other a sandwich of discovery what is this demonstration of power but the architecture of a slaughtered world the wind inherits sour a suffering low in the ground only small animals hear it a displaced thing hungry for corners to stain its own earth what urge could last the swelling pushing against the horizon a body does not break but floats or sinks a good idea is to sell photo albums before the water takes them

V

there is no person in the flood no identity no place of birth no time of birth no stars aligning to witness anything no first word no first kiss no tender heart no trying to win him back no signifiers not leading to a signified no grocery list to make dinner no lasting impression on the job interview no admittance of fault no rescheduling of disappointments no favorite movie tv show book song sex position no good intentions no bad intentions no id ego super-ego no story arcs no character developments no autobiographies masquerading as poetry no coming up to breathe no from the bowels a new personality emerging

VI

reawakening in a shelter forces the mind to its first awake in the night when the neighbors bang on the door to bring news the mountain had given what it could hold and now empty only thunder in the trees the roots have drunk their fill a husband from the lowlands going to the next street over will start a subtle experimentation on time zones reporting of water coming up to his knees to other husbands with dry feet lowland wives will always work in future time their sons and daughters carrying the inside of their house inside a bigger house reawakening among salvaged furniture and bags of clothes and books the plywood pushes cold into the body when sleep takes over the sound of water

VII

feelings of being summoned by an estranged luminosity a dawn separate from its verb more like a continuation of night drenched in spotlight the siren from the sugar factory ooh-woo-eeh 6 am highland neighbors talk to parents about bric-a-brac revealed together with mismatched china from dying relatives abroad a living room filled with a bedroom a kitchen if only the linoleum could join the rescue saving money and time on floor wax what edges are left of the flood soggy abandoned by its creator not exactly a vanishing a light wind and rain to go with seeing the submerged house wading through brown water offers tender familiarity in space closes its accommodation no vacancy for volatile time but there’s bread left in the refrigerator eat it before the ice thaws and soaks everything inside

VIII

it is different when it comes in the day the release lethargic as if waiting for people to come for the spectacle of forgotten detritus sisters choose to strand themselves on second floor window ledges a knowing all sisters possess on the reach of floods the waiting becomes a force pushing against itself not as mature as gravity breath loves it the most sisters perch on windows to love something deep within them parents and brothers wave to them each in their own world each a savagery of the mind reeling at the sight of canals overflowing the waiting shed’s a drop-off point for buses an aunt from the next barangay wading inside soiling butterfly flip-flops for the child to come home from school the wind picks up the child off the steps of the bus guides the child to step on the shallows socks in black shoes heavy with wet the butterflies on her straps flutter underwater arriving but no more time to change out of school clothes

IX

the squatter’s area bears the water longer with its unplanned maze houses a litany to different gods every year is a vengeance as if the flood never came there before as if conversations on prevention don’t repeat this return goes beyond devotion grandfathers and grandmothers don’t even bother speaking from the afterlife the sugar factory announced the gating and the fencing-in of the squatter’s area to protect employee houses from seeing the poor line up to get washing drinking bathing water at the communal pump shirtless fathers make seven trips each hand avoiding a running child who can complain without the possibility of losing the land they do not own so a maze is built on top of the old maze a route has been implemented but the flood only wants to go up and out the walls bear the reminder of the flood the walls keep a record of its height every time last year it was an adult this year a toddler the family scoops out the mud with dustpans throwing out plastic bracelets rats stones from the bathroom that isn’t a bathroom today the cleaning tonight the family sleeps inside damp mosquito nets.

Austere Rex Gamao is from the Philippines. His work has appeared in Transit: an Online Journal, Underwood Press, Cordite Poetry Review, tractions: experiments in art writing, Queer Southeast Asia: A Literary Journal of Transgressive Art, Underblong, TLDTD, Ilahas Journal. He has obtained his MFA in Creative Writing at De La Salle University.