Tag: poetic ritual
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One Drop
One Drop emerged from a moment of ritual reflection—when memory of language felt like water evaporating into something divine and unreachable. The poem is a meditation on muffled fluency, divine thirst, and the act of waiting. It’s not a lament but a ritual of scarcity, where prayer becomes a gesture of hope and consequence. I…
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The Empty Chair
This poem originated from the ritual of watching films with someone I loved, and the chair she occupied became a consecrated site after her passing. Each line mimics a film frame rate—24 letters per line—so the poem itself becomes a reel of memory. Commas and dashes act as cuts, splicing grief into cinematic rhythm. The…
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Birds and Milkweed
Birds and Milkweeds emerged from a moment of listening—pressing my ear to my wife’s chest and imagining wings. The poem enacts the illusion of flight that love offers, and the beauty that remains after we fall. Butterflies and milkweed form a memento mori—not of grief, but of transformation. I wanted to write a poem that…
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For My Older Brother
“For My Brother” came from a quiet moment my brother and I shared, shaped by past pain and recovery. The poem uses body and thought as symbols, with the slash mark showing how deep wounds can leave lasting marks. I wrote it to honor his survival and the work he had done to heal.
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Dream Thinking
Cloud Thinking began as a meditation on my dog Cane’s dream logic, but quickly unraveled into a recursive elegy—one that ritualizes grief, football loss, and the surreal grammar of domestic life. The poem leans into speculative consequence: how a bowl of chicken concentrate, a twitching leg, or a cloud formation can become mythic gestures. I…
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Ghosting
“Ghosting” emerged from the quiet aftermath of survival—after cancer, after loss, after the rituals that remain. It’s a poem about haunting not as horror, but as intimacy: the idea that love, memory, and consequence linger in objects, gestures, and the dog’s bark. I wrote it as a speculative elegy, imagining my own absence as a…
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Under the Sacred Fig
“Under the Sacred Fig” began as a meditation on lineage, migration, and the quiet rituals that shape identity. Inspired by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s Under the Bodhi Tree, I sought to transplant the emotional architecture of ancestral shade into Puerto Rican soil. The fig tree became a hinge—between generations, languages, and departures. This poem honors…
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Flight Track
Flight Track began as a meditation on the quiet obsession of watching a plane’s progress across a screen. I was drawn to the emotional architecture of measurement—how altitude, speed, and descent become metaphors for survival. The poem uses restraint and ritual to explore what it means to track motion without touching it, and how even…
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Shedding
Shedding began as a meditation on the rituals we inherit and the ones we invent to survive grief. I wanted to write a poem that honored the quiet choreography between father and son—the way they speak through thermostats, boiled peanuts, and Dolphins talk. The “fortune cookie” structure emerged as a way to hold fragments of…