The visit & other poems
By: A.D., Ternat, Flanders, Belgium
The visit
Once I crossed oceans to visit
my parents ten years after my first flight
At home I saw my father sitting and trembling
to offer me his hand, which I take and touch
to my forehead, a gesture where blood jumps
up and bows before blood
At the table he grunted to mother to ply me
with blood stew, fried pork skin, vinegar, and beer
faithful destroyers of his eyesight and liver
Dinner done, he rose to stagger to his study
and sat before his collection of old coins
many in mounds, some encased and labelled
Pressing a magnifying glass to his better eye
my dad trembled with almost uncontained delight
as he sighed at his find: ah it’s you, it’s you
It’s you I’ve been missing all this time
The marvel
You’ve changed:
you’ve become more you than me
with your toned arms, stolid hills for shoulders
a sculpted jaw, a face glowing with
the kiss of the future
—a far cry from my flabby parts, sagging cheeks,
and graying hands you used to hold
strolling in parks, sauntering to school
You talk about a life over there
no longer ours, but yours
friends and workmates I might never meet
new evening habits and meals you cook
all in the strange, deeper voice
of the separate person you’ve become
But still, the greatest marvel of all is
that to this place I now inhabit
you’ve returned
and sat down to dinner with me
—who now feels much much more
at home
Driving home from the airport
The oxymoronic rush on Quezon Avenue caught us
a couple hundred meters before the stoplight
the lanes were luggage space packed tight
stuffed with jeeps and busses and Japanese cars
It has been an odyssey from the airport
teeming with returnees like us piling into streets
greeted by the country’s humid embrace
all a hive abuzz with hawkers, barkers, and kin
From the sunstroked island emerged a woman
in front of us, peddling round motley rags for wiping
grease from drivers’ hands, city soot on windshields
sweat from foreheads rolling down like tears
Three for twenty only she bargained
waving her hands, stretching her sagging arms
displaying her face before rolled up windows
a graying bitter gourd under the April sun
As soon as the lights turned her face faded
from view, as the vehicles charged forward
Mostly forgotten it transformed into a silent
splinter, stuck at the back of the mind
The woman became a stowaway on the plane
back to Europe—a modern Odysseus executing a ruse
—a fairy who transforms her rags into royal costumes
—and us into apparently noble, more humane humans
A.D. came to Belgium to study philosophy and literature. He currently teaches philosophy, history, and political science at a European School in Brussels. His poems have found a home in Little Fish, Pena, Ley Lines, Amaranth, and The New Croton Review; some of his poems, fiction, and non-fiction pieces have been selected for publication in The Brussels Review, The Quiet Reader, and Wreckollections. He is also the founding editor of ManilaLitMag. He is a Lupa Alum. You can read his other piece, The Homecoming Gift.
Recent News from A.D.:
A.D.’s poetry collections Against My Ruins and The Way I Wait for You are available as ebooks on Amazon. All the poems in those chapbooks, along with a few new pieces, can also be found in the volume This is How You Lose Her and Other Poems, which will soon be available as an ebook and a paperback on 8Letters and Amazon.
Links:
Against My Ruins
The Way I Wait for You
Artist Links:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/a-d-capili-phd-a39b941b9/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abril.domacapi
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madcap33/
Lupa Alum Shoutout: Book Launch
From: JC; Barcelona, Spain
Lupa Piece: I Think I Made You Up & other poems
Book title: LIAME /lai-am/
Description: Liame, a Filipino man in his twenties, has written two conflicting versions of his life. Both are compelling, both seem true—but only one can be. Which story reflects the truth? And why does he feel compelled to create an alternate version of his reality?
"In the end, can any of us truly know someone else?"
Links:
Paperback: https://amzn.eu/d/6EKMeyu
Hardcover: https://amzn.eu/d/8EfvfJP
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