JONEL ABELLANOSA Engages
Silk Egg: Collected
Novels (2009-2009) by Eileen Tabios
(Shearsman Books, Bristol, U.K., 2011)
Miniatures
I always
expect the “hint of light” I’ve come to intimately know as, unless it doesn’t
linger, the supremely creative mind. “Air forgets to chill” is enough to show
me two bodies tangled in the desire for home.
*
The
mid-afternoon is a museum of miniatures. You may sit in the space between “ever
on the brink” and “ever glinting.” Or draw closer to discern the signature
brushstroke, the bluish shade, the silver gray. The italicized is sculpted into
glints of light.
*
Expansiveness
says a novel is also a place for refugees. Sibilance – like in “The landmines
still exist” – says a novel is also an etude. Rhythm is the creek in your
circulatory system, and these are the pebbles conversing with water: “Acc,”
“urate,” “maps,” “must be,” “a,” “moral.” Mastery calms your breathing. You
realize you are the rhythm.
*
Lights keep
shifting. Your heart is the island in a matter of distance. The air is measured
by the armor it wears – loneliness or pride. By the time the city in the story
lends its radiance, rainfall outside enters pianissimo, and you realize: yes,
that.
*
Insight is a
rattlesnake worthy of its molt if it springs a surprise in expectation’s
doorway. Each line is slithery. Each sentence vibrates its tail. The venom I
need is for my rebirth. Chapter III is longer than I expected – it is a python.
*
Transition
is how the cirrus wears its white. The ambiguities of formations are meant to
be heard. The ambiguous bends light better than a trickle of water. If what
you’re hearing in the story has drowned out the rain outside, then two minds
have merged.
*
The mind
sometimes needs water more than light. If it blooms, it’s not always fully. The
sentence is the pot that holds its roots, and if you see a mirror when you turn
from the whitening sky, don’t be shy to smile.
*
Odors are
opioid, scents like groans of banned cigarillos. You don’t have to see to
smell, because between description and what is left unsaid is memory. Here it
might work differently. You remember something, and then you smell something.
You look around, and don’t see what you smelled.
*
The last
time I saw kaleidoscopes in the air was after reading One Hundred Years of
Solitude. It takes just one lightning, one thunderclap, for words to
arrange and rearrange like pieces in a twirling mandala. An “easing from the
landscape” is how you resist into silence.
You can read
starting with the last sentence, ending with the first. You can take any
sentence, any phrase, any word, and discover a self-sufficient world. This book
of novels is a kaleidoscope – no definite shape, ever shape-shifting, ever
recalibrating its beauty, retooling your heart as the instrument of its alchemy
*
It was
raining in waves and torrents. A cauldron boils in my stomach, my shins feeling
cold, my hands clammy. I wanted to go out to buy paracetamol, but outside water
had risen, searching for knees to devour.
But after
reading my fever was gone.
Note: The
white space after the asterisk below speaks as much.
*
*****
Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals
and anthologies including, Rattle,
Anglican Theological Review, Poetry Kanto, Filipino-American Artist Directory,
The McNeese Review and Marsh Hawk
Review. Early in 2017 Alien Buddha
Press published his third chapbook, “Meditations,” His latest poetry
collection, “Songs from My Mind’s Tree” is forthcoming (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York). He is a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and
Dwarf Stars Award nominee.
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