"WATCH" by IVY ALVAREZ

REBECCA LOUDON Reviews

“Watch” by Ivy Alvarez

(poem featured in VERSES TYPHOON YOLANDA: A Storm of Filipino Poets, editor Eileen R. Tabios

Meritage Press, San Francisco & St. Helena, 2014)

Watch

I can’t have been more than ten.
So I must’ve been nine, eight or seven.
Running around with the neighbourhood kids,
somewhat scratched and getting dirty. On my wrist,
I had a watch: pink, cheery. On its face was a mouse.
The mouse hands were clock hands. I liked to pull
the watch pin out, wind the hands back and forth.
The mouse waves and smiles. The watch would chime
the hour with a song about it being a small world after all.
I’d hum along even though I thought the world was big.
The sky was big here. Clouds were big, bigger
than the building I lived in. Grandmother’s house
was made of sticks, concrete, the grey slurry
hardening into a landing for the ladder that led
to the second storey. Other uncles and cousins
had cut the bamboo into thick strips, to nail across 
the rolled-out sleeping mat, I could peer through,
between bamboo slats, watch lola’s bent head. She was always attending.
Whether minding her store, or sewing, threading a needle
she had pinched with her lips, or, in the morning, bashing
the water from a week’s wet laundry with a thick stick
cut down for that purpose from some tree, hang them all
on the lowered rope and, with another stick,
raise the line high, to catch the wind, sun, sky, our clothes
bellied out, bleached white, drops darkening the sand,
vanishing into air, turning into clouds, falling as the rain
that lashed my grandmother’s house one night as a typhoon
blew through. Downstairs filled with neighbours,
sleeping on the concrete floor. Outside, the rain became needles,
pinning the night through and through. When we woke,
the sun was out, the water dried up. I wound my watch,
brought it up to my ear to hear it tick. 

Ivy Alvarez’s poem Watch begins with an adult reminiscing about being unstuck in time. //I can’t have been more than ten. // So I must’ve been nine, eight or seven.// This poem explores the insides of dreams and the way the outside world is in constant flux in a child’s mind. The narrator wears the eponymous mouse watch: // pink, cheery. / On its face was a  mouse. // The mouse is not named but we all know the mouse’s identity since the mouse has white hands the mouse waves and smiles and chimes the hours with a song that we all know by heart even if we’ve never visited the fabled land of Disney.

As we read further we too become unstuck in time and then unstuck in the physical world where // Clouds were big, bigger / than the building I lived in. Grandmother’s house // the narrator uses the watch hands to become powerful to control that which cannot be controlled to pull time forward as it must by pulling the watch pin out and winding the hands around. // I liked to pull / the watch pin out, wind the hands back and forth. // The invocation of Grandmother’s house has a feel of the fairy tale to it and this is born forward in the poem with the building itself which // was made of sticks, concrete, the grey slurry / hardening into a landing for the ladder that led / to the second storey. // Even in the poem the second storey becomes its own ‘story’ a place to hide or as the ladder suggests a castle turret a place through which the narrator can  peer // between bamboo salts, watch Lola’s bent head. She was always attending. // as our narrator is always watching attending in her way attending the movement of time.

The Grandmother is busy minding her store sewing threading a needle bashing water from the wet laundry with a stick such great business and then the clothesline that is high enough to catch the wind the sun the sky. The details in this poem are superb as is the music inside the iii sounds echoed in the words kids its pin big bigger lived sticks thick strips lips with stick wind and the last word tick. This soft repeated vowel pulls the threads of the poem tight to make it secure and brings the ear of the reader into a lulling though still dangerous world. The music allows a portal into this scene of childhood. The Grandmother is tender a caretaker who controls the adult world in a magical way.

I love the way the poem starts with the watch the narrator humming along then moves into a larger view of the Grandmother and then becomes vivid with detail and gorgeous rollicking verbs hardening cutting bamboo sewing threading bashing hanging and the full throated words bellied and bleached. Alvarez’s skill with language is fragrant and full in this poem. The reader gets caught up in this lovely setting until the typhoon comes then we are reminded that we are not on steady land we are never really secure. Once the typhoon passes the narrator wakes up and she winds her watch and she is safe for now because she controls time and thus her world.

*****

Rebecca Loudon lives and writes in Seattle. She is the author of Radish King and Cadaver Dogs. She is a professional musician and teaches violin lessons to children.

[Each review provides the opinion of the reviewer and not necessarily the opinion of THE HALO-HALO REVIEW staff.]