Post by thepoetslizard on Oct 10, 2008 15:57:09 GMT 2
Melissa Vila-Real Basmayor
Bio
Melissa Villa-Real Basmayor graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines, Diliman in 2008 with a BA in English Studies (Language). She is currently a freshman at the UP College of Law.
"The Sum of Its Parts"
"Whopper" Giant Squid Washes Ashore in Australia
-- July 11, 2007, National Geographic News
Finally, it is before us, this creature that partly controlled the contours of the sea, the shapes of the waves. And here we think that because we can see it, we can hold it with our gazes; that because we can name it, we can call it ours; that by its being
on our shores, we, with our tools and our thoughts, can cut up its massive self to section upon section, until it is nothing more than the sum of its parts, or an aggregate of ideas. Thus, we reduce it to news, to specimen, to a photo you save on your hard drive, the number of dinners you think it is worth spread there across its ropy arms. But as we look at its body stretched across sand, drenched with brine, with blood, we see its skin glisten, and we think, what of the sea were we able to steal, what remains to be seen, to be felt and held, its body, finally there on the sand, in someone’s hands in the lab, among the files in your laptop, or finally—perhaps—finally, not.
*
from "City Diptych"
"As Light"
What makes the city is light, all its kinds. Across the street, the child drags a block of ice. Leaves a dark streak on the dust that breaks the single hue all cities are made of. Grey that resists gradient of space, an insistence that the city is not one thing, but a thing of many ones. Thus cancels itself out, thus proves itself true, our invariable view distilling itself to particulars—child, ice, line, color that thrives as consciousness, as when such child turns a corner, sees the light around him change, and as if the city could also be place, thinks he’s somewhere else. What makes the city is a lie.
*
"The Laws of Motion"
The widow remembers
that the secret for the eye to see
clearly is to trick it. Once
she decided to put
a mirror on each wall
so that light will move.
Forward and backward, forward
and backward, a stitch
that will sew
the rooms together.
After the funeral she decides
she's had enough
of mirrors. She takes
to windows, instead.
Every time she looks out
through one, she feels
part of her
moving with the gesture,
inching to where
there's no turning back,
but remaining in the room
as an illusion.
