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ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently. He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

7. TODAY'S NEWS AFTER LAST NIGHT'S RAIN (A Poem Triggered by a Morning Porch Ligne Donne [Given Line])

#7. A poem triggered by a ligne donne (given line)




TODAY’S NEWS



Washlines strung on gnarled lean-to posts
Hide hovels with garments shrunk in the wash:
Dhaka’s label shirts for Hilfiger’s shelves
Are ready for the children’s harvest—after
Last night’s rain, dust and mites and muck
Should have been rinsed off to get them
Ready for the cackling cutters in slumyards
Who would bundle “made in China” shirts
While cracking whips on narrow backs
Or wraith-like limbs wherever lashes find them.

After last night’s rain, the snow fits each
Dip and hummock more tightly, as would mud
In gaping mouths of children buried in slides
Of Brazilian earth, or tapered coastlines
Washed into rampaging rivers reclaiming
Riparian rights over garbage landfills
In Sri Lanka, Benguet, Samar, Pakistan,
Australia’s Queensland, Chile, Copenhagen,
Manila, New York, name them, they are
In today’s AP, Reuters, CNN, Ankara disaster
News. Nostradamus, Nostradamus.

The creaking of doves’ wings after last
Night’s rain is hibernation sound heard
Round the world. At season’s turn, whirrs
Of flapping wings might yet bring an avian
Rainfall—of dead and dying birds plummeting
To earth not unlike smirking kamikaze pilots
Immolating themselves for the Rising Sun;
The cracking of wings after last night’s
Rain might yet be the mystery of the perishing
Sandpiper burrowing into tar pits or
Mallards choking on Gulf Oil cum BP cocktail, or
Kookaburras muzzled on the old gum tree.

Ah, rain and snow and creaking dove wings:
After last night’s rain, they are a bloody plot.


— ALBERT B. CASUGA
Mississauga, 1-19-11

The Given Line:

After last night’s rain, the snow fits each dip and hummock more tightly, like a garment shrunk in the wash. The creaking of doves’ wings.---Morning Porch, Dave Bonta, 1-19-11

Commenting on the poem triggered by his Morning Porch post, Dave Bonta says: There’ve been mornings I felt like that. Those are, after all, mourning doves. (http://www.morningporch.com/)


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