2012 – Page 2 – Ishara K. Agostini

July 19, 2012ishara No Comments

Anthology

I would write you everyday.

Poems and scribbles and notes,

Until you learned

The unevenness of my hand

The habits of my penmanship

The chaos of my scrawl.

In a world of dying paper and ink

They would save every scrap

Torn from the back of notebooks

Jotted down on well-folded receipts

They would compile anthologies of my sweet

nothings

Until children who had long forgotten pens and lined paper

Would press their fingers into the ink and

indentations

And know this is what devotion feels like.

July 19, 2012ishara No Comments

For The Moth That Lived and Died In My Bathroom

And his wings, folded

shut in death, concealed that he

had been beautiful

July 16, 2012ishara No Comments

Coming Out

I read that we never get

to stop coming out.

Well I came out to myself the other day,

Stepped out of my glass closet for a
moment,

Well, not so much a class closet than one
of those

Cabinets old people use to store their
china

I am transparent, the way I hoard your gifts,

Your presents, your presence.

I never tell the ones who need to hear it
the most.

Instead I let it rest on my lips the way I wish
yours would

And flitter round my tongue the way I want
yours to,

But I can’t.

Because I only tell you in sighs I hope you
read

Or maybe see it in my gazes that linger too
long

Or notice how I touch you too often, sit
too close,

Smile too much.

I am transparent in my cabinet as I watch your hands

Dance across tabletops.

But I would never come out to you.

I much rather confess to strangers on the
internet,

Or in ambiguously phrased verse,

That I dream about you at night

And I think of you all day

And while I may joke about others,

Everything I say I love about them,

Just reminds me of you.

July 16, 2012ishara No Comments

Shop Boy Crush

Do you have a lunch break, or do you

sustain on cuteness and sheepish smiles?

Because if you do, I do too.

And i don’t mean to be ambiguous but I do

mean both.

Because if you don’t have a lunch break, I

don’t really need

That soup and a sandwich I buy everyday

Just that smile…

See I’m like a plant except instead of

sunshine, I flourish on your shine

Because boy do you shine.

See I’m more like a flower than anything

else,

You know, like how they lean to the sun and

all?

Yeah, that’s my flow and I wouldn’t mind if

perhaps we could…

Pollinate?

No I’m just kidding, I meant conversate,

Oh sorry,

Converse, my bad.

Your brightness makes me a little dizzy

So forgive me if I get a little bit mixed

up,

You make my head light with your light.

And if you do break for lunch?

Perhaps you can take a break by the juice

bar

Because bar none, you are sweet

And it would be nice to see your other half

And perhaps another side of you 

Other than” thank you and please come

again,”

though at this point I’m sure even though

you say that to all the girls

and all the boys

and whoever else may patronize this fine

establishment,

that you specifically mean me…

so if you have a lunch break, or sustain on

cuteness and sheepish smiles

remember I do too.

July 16, 2012ishara No Comments

Hands

I have become enamored with your hands.

The way slender fingers join knuckles,

Soft palms taper to fine wrists.

I cannot look away.

Cupping your face,

Clasped around knee,

Rest belies their strength.

Your hands could craft the world if they

wanted to.

July 16, 2012ishara No Comments

Sea Shanty

I wrote this on the offhanded request of a friend. She said that her OTP (One True Pairing), was sand and salt water. And I take inspiration where ever I can get it.

Sea Shanty

You are the salt of my earth,

Said the tide to the

shore.

Leaving sweet nothings

In pools filled with

stars

As the moon’s siren

song

Pulled them further

apart.

Palm trees with their

heads

buried in the clouds

promised he’d return,

You could hear it

in the crashes of the

waves.

But every time you

leave,

You wear me away,

The shore whispered

back.

July 10, 2012ishara No Comments

An Education

I want to learn the

language your body speaks,

Whispered by your hips

as you move,

Decode the ciphers

between your sighs.

I have learned the

angle of your slouch,

The spread of your

fingers

And the coil of your

curls.

There is a science to

you I have not yet learned.

I have learned the

contours of your face

The locations of your

moles

The longitude and

latitude of your dimples

The length and breadth

of your smile

Better than I ever

learned geography.

Maybe I’d map those

contours of your face

(Which I’ve already

committed to memory)

but I can’t.

To recreate the

brownness of your skin

is more motivation than three years of art

Ever were.

Writing commits you to

memory.

June 14, 2012ishara No Comments

Flash Fiction Friday #42: Shaman

 first fff in a while! And now i have to know: how many times can i write about obeah before i actually need to research it?

flash

fiction friday #42 (inclusion)trigger: religion,

superstition, tradition, vision, collision.

                         Shaman

He didn’t like to talk about it, but given the nature

of gossip, everyone knew and did the talking for him.

Big time evangelist preacher,

but I hear his brother is a obeah man! Yes! I hear it too! An’ it wasn’t jus’

he, his granny in it too! My tanty was tellin’ me so de other day…

Not to say it wasn’t true. For Raymond, growing up was

as steeped in Granny’s special prayers as it was in entire Sundays spent in

church and revival tents. It had gone on for so long that by the time he was

old enough to think anything of it, he couldn’t imagine anything different.

Raymond didn’t hear much about Randy these days other

than the whispers of the congregation. The last he heard was that he was up in

some shack in San Souci, honing his arts, to paraphrase his grandmother. Randy

had embraced it from the start. Raymond had to have a brush with death before

he did anything about it. It was ten years ago and he and his best friend

Marlon were coming home from a Carnival fete, (the congregation absolutely

loved that part), when a driver drunker than he was sped through an

intersection and ran into their car, passenger-side first. The driver of the

other car had been killed instantly and, as he would find out later, so had

Marlon. Yet, when Raymond awoke in the ICU, Marlon was there with him. And he

stuck around for a while after that, (and would visit whenever he got bored

with whatever otherworldly business he conducted when he wasn’t busy haunting

Raymond).

 It was

Marlon who helped him figure out the whole healing touch, and Marlon who

suggested the whole church business. His granny knew of course, and would tut

righteously whenever Raymond mentioned Marlon.

“Spirits not supposed to linger so long,”

she would chide, sucking her teeth and shaking her head, to which Raymond would

respond with a halfhearted shrug. He knew about as much about ghosts now as he

did ten years ago. His forte now lay in balancing the people’s beliefs in the

divine and the extent of his ability.

 He

started out about a year after his accident. Between the seminary and the

advice from Granny, Marlon and Randy, Raymond thrived. For the first time in

his life he was actually doing well with something: secondary school was

lackluster at best and life pre-collision was idle, punctuated by whatever

hustle was necessary to fund temporary desires. But the Church made him feel

whole. So his congregation grew. Marlon had the makings of a shrewd businessman

and he wasn’t going to let go to waste just because he was dead, and donations

poured in.

Raymond declined the radio and TV spots and tried to

keep the pills and tonics to a bare minimum. He would cringe when he heard

other evangelists on the radio with their bizarre Frankenstein-esque Yankee-cum-“foreign”

accents rebuking the Devil and lauding their various remedies, (specially

shipped and available for a very affordable $700 package deal). He was already

mixing “devil ting” with scriptures and his morals wouldn’t let him betray the

people further.

Yet Raymond knew that some of the same members of his

congregation that would sit and gossip about his brother would drive up to San

Souci to see Randy with matters they felt weren’t appropriate to bring to the

House of the Lord. Two sides to the same coin; what was obeah to one was

religion to another and whatever Spirit had given him this gift was fed by the

same belief of the people. Obeah man, witch doctor, pastor… Raymond had figured

out a long time ago that it was the same calling, different name. The trance,

the healing… It was all steeped in ritual and parlour tricks, with a kernel of

truth nestled at the centre of it all. Shaman was shaman.

June 14, 2012ishara 1 Comment

Ethos

I always stay too late.

I am always the last to leave,

The one left to taste the soured wine

Passed in frantic effort

To regain the spirit,

Get burnt by the embers

Of hysterical bodies

Trying to rekindle the longspent fire.

Last to leave

And first to come off that high

Brought on by either ethers or ethos

First to sniff the stale smiles that linger

in the air

Long after the fleeting fancy

That brought them has left.

I always leave too late,

And as I totter home,

I am always emptier in the dying hours

Drained from the effort of trying to live.

June 14, 2012ishara No Comments

Heat

And it felt like all there ever was,

was heat.

32 degrees coupled with too wet air,

hot stickiness of flesh it incites

hot throbbing in the tips of my fingers

and the end of my toes

hot sighs with hot breath

as hot air lays sultry kisses on

blistering necks.

Hot rain hits hot pavement and sizzles

And all there ever was,

was heat.

My paradise is now hell.