THE POET AT TEN

Sound inhabited me. Summers, the insect chir made the coming months seem mechanized. I moved that way, my ear propelling me forward, distracted. Lights from the county fair dangled little spirals, red puckers with my eyes closed. The Ferris wheel, unquestionably distant . . . rising syntax and falling.

Things compressed and bulged, quiet little breathings against my chest.

Mosquito, mosquito, I would call, enamored with my own blood which was not darker than the other boys, despite their own chitter. I was unsure of their little nips as one unsure of a scar.

And all this, the schism of what my ear picked up and what I felt: the voice of my mother through the electric fan chopped into bits.

I was irreverent in my youth. Not a hair of mine was trained on words I said. At the first red flare, I'd hurl curses. They were bees spiraling out of me.

Sometimes I wanted to gather them in the playground with my bare hands, I thought, much like guiding water into a plastic bag. I was stung for my wretchedness frequently.

At times I was the hollow place between my clavicle and my neck. Troublesome, I was uncomfortable with eye contact because of their slant and so I became troublesome . . . often sidelong.

Little mastications dotted my ears, telling me to shut up. So I would clamp shut my heathen mouth. There was nothing to prove to God or otherwise.

In the untimely event of my death, I decided I would look up. And if there were a blemish on my face my mouth won't falter.

When I was a child, I was afraid of my name.
Tender, I was a shuddering tailfin:

shark-bit and gray. In order to purge fear
I'd recite my name until it sounded

of helicopter blades or ghosts. Oliver, Oliver, Oliver
soon morphed into ah! liver!

and other children soon became
harmoniously red in their jests

like the blur of a pinwheel. Sky-eyed,
I would endure octaves, decrees,

whole legions of stutters. How martyred was I
in my resignation? How wind-swept and pure?

The world was lush and androgynous. We were little
naked birds chirring into the others' ears, him to her.

One child, later, wanted to eat my name,
her mouth large and terrible. It rent, slow . . .

sinister, a split in the sails of a skiff doomed.
Dead in the water. Other children would resuscitate it

so that the name was constant as wind through canyons.
There were caves and there were caves.

Dangerous little fluids, we were trickling, then still
giving a pause to breathe. And again we would take up

these pellets and dash them against our ears
leaving depressions nudged enough to hold water.

I still don't know what resides at the back of one's mouth.
All of it is forgery: steel to stone and wood to bone.

© Oliver de la Paz 2007

Oliver de la Paz was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in Ontario, Oregon. He has a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in English from Loyola Marymount University, and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Arizona State University. He has taught at Arizona State University, Gettysburg College, Utica College, and he currently teaches creative writing at Western Washington University. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, his work has appeared in journals such as Quarterly West, The Asian Pacific American Journal, North American Review, and elsewhere. His book of prose and verse, Names Above Houses, was a winner of the Crab Orchard Award Series and published by Southern Illinois University Press. He recently completed his second manuscript, "Furious Lullaby."

© MiPOesias Magazine 2000-2007~. A Menendez/King Publication ~