Poetry | Shalom Galve Aranas

Mama Medicine

I find a garden of medicine

 inside myself.

Sometimes I dig in

and find stuff like

mermaid’s tail, tinsel soldiers,

a mossy blanket,

my darkest nightmare

thrusting from below.

Other times, when I cannot bear it

I find a garden filled with herbs and spices

for healing, I remember the Banaba tree

whose branch entered our second floor

with lavender flowers meant for solace.

I find weeds I drew on paper, so dry

they were the only things that could grow in the garden

in that place, Sta. Rosa.  An Indian mango tree would flower, bloom

and grant us green fruits in the shape of heart valves.

My daughter would bring in her friends from the house next door

and play until her friend said her auntie and her papa were the

best of friends, at night while I slept on Benadryl and Lithium.

It was so funny and laughter is the best

medicine, of all.

The Indonesian Contact

(Lombok, Indonesia, Earthquake, 2018)

I’ve lost contact

when you went to Bali.

Could there be more

of an earthquake

making my bones quiver

as I scan the sea

of faces?

The shiny bells tolling

for the death knell

and I find you among

the rubble embracing

your lover from the

roof carving her back

or pulling her

from the fissures

of love

like the depths of

her skin. You

said a sudden goodbye

and now nothing

but the dust now settling

to reveal a chaos

of children, women and men, elderly

under the weight of

rubble like wads of

leaves crushed by

the new culture

of the climate we

cannot grapple

nor understand. I wish

for you a future where

our children will live

through all this

all over the world

smiting, resisting

the call of prophets,

scientists who gloat

with earnest compassion:

we told you so.

Life is too short for therapies

On unrequited loves

and yet I spend money on it

as though it would kill me,

as though life were measured

between birth and death

and in between is the

crux of the matter, we suffer

we love, we die with our heads

against the walls of our graves

or as ashes thrown over bare hilltops

because no one can own our bodies

but the earth staring like an eye

to the bluest sky.