Auditory Cortex / April 2018 (Issue 39)


To Motion

by Ivan Emil A. Labayne

The calligrapher mistook the ink
for cauliflower
brushing it against
the colors of his chopping board.

It's Sunday, says the yoga mat
in her little room
and the cooking will be done without fire
and the sketching will be done with all satire.

When it's time to do yoga
the calligrapher favors math over the mat
counting calisthenics
and measuring his malleability.

These flexibilities can be flexed
implied the cauliflower, now indigo
I agree, said the ink, tasting like mango.

When the cooking is done, the brush is all burnt
and the sketching is finished
with its lying and its laughing

Done with his yoga, the calligrapher
mistook math for kinetics
and that is where he rested.

 Highly recommended:
"To Motion" by Ivan Emil Labayne (Philippines)

Lian-Hee Wee's commentary: This poem is unusual and difficult to narrate. It is poetic in the range of imageries threaded together as mistakes of the calligrapher as the activities unfold on a Sunday, a day of rest, and eventually rested despite all the kinetics of yoga and and calisthenics. This mood is conveyed in a rather matter-of-fact reading, as one hears the poet describe these apparently non sequitur images of talking ink tasting like mango that was once mistaken for cauliflower, the latter somehow having become indigo.
[Read other Auditory Cortex poems.]

 
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