halfcactus

From Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta's Hush Harbor:

Crust of Bread, and Such—

Neither the risen dough, or the plush
Square with its savory load, drip
Of marmalade or butter—I want the morsel,
The plate peppered with crumbs, the crust
Of bread. I want the edges, jagged where the knife
Kneads its urgent imprecisions, the scrawny
Bit on precious China. I want a small heart,
The color of old quarts and burnt rust.
Let stars do their work on an opposite sky,
Constellate the impossible shape
Of a far boy. Which is to say, I'm through
With want, as a cleaver to his crust.
I'm done the way rain is done
With its tinny shudder crossing glass;
The way the heart is done doing time
In a hard place—a clear shimmer of sky
Begging the same question, What?
What do you want?

Phototaxis

It's all the same with fire and flame,
The yellow rim of the brightest
candle. See how they hover and start
in wild flight without cause or aim,
pursue the yellow folly. A woman tells me
love is buckle on skin, whisk of a whip
at its hardest shake. The bright blue gash
on her inner thigh as he presses her
against the wall, saying sorry, sorry—
give to any plum wound
a dark arithmetic, and it evens out love.
Two moths around a hollow shoot,
lit by a thin saber of light. Science tells us
they think it's the moon, but it won't be long
before the low plummet down.
Like moths to a flame, we say, but we call
only half the story. It might be the light
we know is the light by which we fall.
It might be. Come here.

Added Burning Houses & Hush Harbor by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta to my reading rotation because I realized I could acquire it through Shopee. \o/ I've only gone through a few of the poems, which made me starkly feel that I was not smart or literary enough, but Temper/7 Down has sat in my brain for days and days and maybe that's enough. It's part of a section that's formatted as a series of crossword puzzle hints, so I guess it makes sense for me to still be trying to follow the emotional threads.

Here's the full poem, which I worked hard to format with html.

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta, "Temper/7 Down"

Hellions in your novels balled fists Inside trouser pockets. You never let A belt lick welts on a child's thigh.
	Barroom rakes, at the slightest libel Dream of triggers and knives. You never put a wife in place
With a shake or a sharp word. Stones were paperweights for Memos. Knives were cameos
	Mounted on walls or tucked In a safe. And pity the man You would not hate, him you'd
Consecrate with your indifference. Best was how you taught a child To spit her rage like a catcher
	To his mitt, and hurl with all Her bile and length, Neither glass nor stone,
Only the brittle shells Of eggs her throw Broke against the wall.
	Temper: to see in red, To lose control. But also This: to curb, to hold.

I made a Justice in the Dark gifset based on the last three lines:
jitd gif: temper

+5 more gifs

Also on tumblr

Creation notes:

I used a ripped paper texture for the big paper background, but for the paper strips—I was playing around and found that Resolve has a Paper Edges effect omggggggg

For the fonts—I was looking for a suitably distressed font and suddenly remembered Eduardo Recife's Misprinted Type. I wondered if his website was still up and it is! :D I've never really been able to incorporate his fonts/textures into my fanwork, but for this I used his Misproject font.

Entries tagged with mookie katigbak-lacuesta

It might be the light we know is the light by which we fall.

To see in red, to lose control.

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