FRACTIONS
by Anya Lofamia
bodies and becoming
who chose this face for me : is this mine?
there is some strangeness in being born
to a body of a twenty-six-year-old human being.
what happened to me? he thought. it was no dream :
ah, but Samsa’s was a different turn. reading glasses, crumpled
hysteric papers on the mattress. the feet becomes conscious
of the floor and recalls the color : wet. human shells and poetry.
inching towards the desk, the hand stretches for a pen and paper
my dearest H., my one,
but the comma draws its blade and cuts off the hand.
who chose this body is better off without me.
how about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this
nonsense? he thought. that was something he was unable to do
because –who will choose the dream for me? darkly,
the body will not sleep darkly.
fractions
but we can only see fractions, say you
to me, your eyelashes falling out
sexily. yes, i say, only fractions.
because that’s how you read everything
and it’s how i speak to you. in old sepia.
in an unrealized artifact. this is how we say
we love : we let everything agree with water.
rawly, you walk upon the black breast of earth
and deeply now I stare: what we do with so much?
we cracked open the word once, upon
a time so hunchbacked, only we could re-
member the scene. langkag, darling, must
mean hollowness more than absence. what do we
do with so much. remains. the word, serpent-
ing towards me from your eyes whispering:
when i feel like screaming, darling, i whisper.
Stick Drawings, for Kazuki
the city the spectator
my hand in the shell
of your hand I remember
my mother said I am
all over the place but
today I am still as I steal
the lines from your palms
to draw myself wings
which is you which is this
which is here: nothing
can be given or taken back
I remember you lost
your phone in the sea.
This line gives it back.
A crunch of an apple
somewhere, on the sidewalk,
a broken bottle of beer,
dislocation and words,
dislocation in words,
comma a traitor,
cutting us short,
a play for amateurs
About the Author:
Ma. Antonette Lofamia is a Filipino writer living in Japan. Published as Anya Lofamia, her works appear in Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal (Spring 2015 Issue and the 2015 printed anthology), Plural Prose Journal, and Queen Mob’s Tea House Misfic Doc. Her work also appears in the recently published anthology, NARITO: Essays on Place.