dear communion,

There we were kneeling at the edge of the violet purple velvet ropes.  My grandfather had died and I’d only seen him twice.  Once when my family “visited” Florida and just happened to stop by his small condominum by the poolside.  The second time he came to California, but we had to tell my grandmother to be out of town that weekend, as they weren’t on talking terms, something about him cheating on her when they had three small children and she hated him for life.

He had died from a heart attack, and his new wife was Catholic, and she made us kneel.  The priest placed a small white wafer on my tongue and then gave each of us a small glass of wine.  I chugged mine down as the wafer made my mouth dry.  The wine burned down my nine-year-old throat and had to do everything in my power to not spit the dry bitter liquid all over the priest and my grandfather’s casket.  I kneeled there throughout the entire ceremony with a grimace on my face, not knowing what kind of juice the priest had tried to poison me.  My grandfather’s new wife was a fat dumpy character, who ate cream donuts wrapped in sticky cellopane and always had a look of distain on her piggy face.  My mom choked back the wine, and looked down at me to drink mine, but by that time, I had already swallowed down the wine.

The church began to spin and grow hazy. I felt like laughing, at the priest who looked hot in his robes, at the new wife in her too tight pink suit (I thought this was a funeral…), at my step-uncle who eyes were glazed over and he kept tapping his leg so a quiet “ping-ping-ping” could be heard from his general direction, and his wife, an expressive woman that would yell and scream in your face to get her way.  I wondered where all this family had come from, why they just suddenly appeared now, but the one connection to them was dead.  My grandfather slept serenely in his casket, his nails all manicured and he looked like he mocked all of us, kneeling there in the church, our legs all asleep.  No one was crying, just quietly chugging down their small portions of wine at communion.

Dear Logic,

Conflict with conflict.

Opposing forces, dual natures, conflict.

What is opposite of the I?  I? is I the opposite of I?  You would be in my perspective, so You couldn’t possible be the opposite.  It would be under my perspective and therefore not opposite of I?  The thing which opposes is the other self calling itself I, right?

I versus I

I against I

I mirror I

II

II

I holds up a mirror.  I mirrors I.  I holds up a mirror mirroring I.  IIII.

II IIII II

II II II IIII II II II

dear love, and you too, money,

ReMeMbEr WhEN wE uSeD To KiCk IT BeHiND ThE BLeAcHeRS, ALL tHAT maCkiNg AnD KiSSiNG AbOuT.  I ThOuGhT YoU WeRe LeGiT, LoVE, BuT ThEn YoU ReAReD YoUr NaStY FaCE AnD I WaS LikE, EWWWW… OH NO YoU DiDn’T, AnD ChAsED YoU DoWN tHe HALLwAY.  MoNeY, YoU LiKe To KiCK IT WiTh LoVe SoMEtiMeS NeaR S-WinG.  YoU uSeD To BrAG AnD BrAG AbOuT HoW YoU DeAL ThIS WaY anD ThAt WaY, AnD PlAyiNg RiSkY GaMeS oF HoLd’Em.

ReMeMBER WhEN? xoxo

to an endless road,

I thought I had a choice at the intersection of right and left.  But I noticed that I could still turn right in the left turn lane. Strange, its like I still had options even after making the decision to turn left, like fate was giving me a second chance to decide, but strange enough I took a left still.  I traveled down that left road until it came to dead halt, until there was no more road to travel by car.  I had to get out and breath in the air of nothingness, nowhereness.  The world seems to stop there, there was no more beyond the road, none that I had ever traveled at least.  I donned a backpack full of emergency equipment and began to walk.  The mountains were black and white diamonds and the moon was an iridescent rainbow glaze.  The road was a milky marble surface where my feet would sink into and the sky was illuminated pink.  The road seems endless and I was curious so I kept on going, walking along the road that I had chose since I turned left off the 405 freeway that one Saturday night in August.  I could have never predicted that it would have lead me to the edge of my own consciousness and beyond, that where my mind could only imagine was the beginning of a journey i knew nothing about.  was there wifi out here in this desolate desert of my imagination?  Where would i fill my canteen of water? Would I have thirst out here? Do I still have my senses?  It was so silent that I forgot if I could still hear and it seemed like everything was a shift of my mind, that the moment I began to think of something, the air would shift and begun a different place.  I realized that I was in slight control of my environment and began to wish up fantastical backdrops for the endless road.  Marshmellow bushes and figs the size of sedans.  The sky dripped of tamarind juice and I had to just lick the air around me for a taste.  Everything around me was sticky and sweet and soon my stomach began to ache for a normal surrounding.  No sooner did I think of home did the mountains of candy become track housing and the landscape of milk and honey become suburbia.  And now, I’m depressed.

to the pigeon that shed its feathers that i picked up while biking,

i thought i heard you, screaming in pain, deliberating shedding your feathers to fake a trail for the cat or hawk after your soul. one by one the gray, black and white feathers dropped away from your shaking body, each feather representing minutes, hours, days of your spirit, each feather will its own unique story.  like that time when you were learning to fly.  all your siblings jumped from the mother nest and soared and glided in the wind. you, shivering in your newly forming ashy wings, so afraid of the unknow, not having a clue what ‘flying’ meant.  you heard your mother swaking in the distant and didn’t want to be pushed out of the treetop home, so you leaped and spread your wings and caught the wind.  you gasped as you thought you would plumet, but you rode the gales of breeze and flapped and rose high above the tops of trees and buildings.

the little boy threw rocks at you while his mother wasn’t looking and injured your left wing.  flying was history and flapping was no longer a painless act.  cats began to smell your weakness and hawks preyed upon young hurt things.  you would sense them tracking you, soundlessly creeping behind trees, making you paranoid, making your nervous for life, of death.  the cat hissed and lunged and you let go of a feather.  you’d hope that the cat would lick the feather like a popsicle, satisfiying the need to prey, but the appetite just build and began to take a form of a lion, a beast with fangs, the cat was no longer a mere cat, but a raging ravenous feline.  her teeth bore and hissed as the pigeon played mind games.  she wished to feed, to feast and this pathetic pigeon was desperately molting.

my tire was flat.  we caught a bus back and walked the bikes back to Walmart where I could pick up new tubes and this floresant green gel that coats the inside of your tires.  i picked up a black pigeon feather.  i found another and another and another.  every twenty feet or so i picked up beautiful bird feathers.

the pigeon desperate for life, hobbled through the grass, hiding behind a tree stump, a shrub, but the cat was relentless. eventually the cat had its feast, and i took home the seven pigeon feathers and made a mobile for my car.  the sacrifice was made with the life of a pigeon, and i am honoring its bird life with this letter.

dear vacationer’s suntanline

Yes, you, that line on the back of my neck from the sun this past weekend, and on the right side of my cheek, kissing it through the ride down and not on the ride back up.  One day is all it takes to see that a world isn’t so far away, and things change.  Sitting there in that little cafe, one that I haven’t sat in in years, swings the pengalum of time back to that year that I pranced around on a creditcard lifeline and a tiny sketchbook that I was getting to know. I didn’t realize how lucky I was then, how lucky I am now, I realize that it is a blessed thing to have the luxury to sit and think and draw.  I see that we must sit there and ponder on nothing, just breathing in and out and maybe not having to have anything to say at all.  A smile and a kiss on the nose, on the outer corner of the eye, the scratchy stubble of a two-days old goatee and wipe away the tears and the burrow of a brow.

the night sinks into its self, the mirror reflects mirror of a mirror of an image of myself, and I smile my biggest grin at the wall while I sit peeing in a restaurants bathroom.  I like to sing in parking garages and evalavators where the acoustics echo back and forth and I just know that I am trying hard and practicing the ride up and down and back and forth, the 405 exit crenshaw blvd, biking through the traffic and the people, fighting hard against the waves, crashing and crashing and crashing again, the ever forward paddle, the ever onward march.  tired.  my feet are tired, and the waves keep coming, and i am no good with a board.  we drive, listening to all the songs of high school and friends are throwing 90s parties to be ironic and as a humor flashback, and i think its genius. i put on the red lipstick and hike up my jean shorts with the plaid shirt tied around the waist, mini backpack on. i run into the sand and fall into the water.

dear feet,

are you flat, is that why you hurt so much?  I know that i haven’t been caring for you, like you’ve been caring for me.  I know that standing 15+ hours isn’t very thoughtful of me.  I will elavate you tonight.  (a’misa)

to the airwaves,

i wish i could broadcast into the world.  i used to record myself while I drove back and forth from San Diego to Gardena, spilling my guts into my little voice recorder.  I would sing, rant, cry, laugh, tell stories of my childhood, words of advice that i’ve heard over and over again.  the best thing about that was that i imagined that my stories would affect someone other than myself.  the hope that i wasn’t alone.  that i was connected with others that felt my same pain, isolation, feelings, thoughts.  i just wanted to feel apart of something bigger than myself, attached to a network of those who were passionate about similar things.

hi, this is ann “a’misa” chiu, and its almost my bedtime, except we drank coffee with dessert tonight and therefore will be up for the next couple of hours, maybe getting high, or fooling around the house, or surfing facebook waiting for more people to update their statuses at 3am.  i’ve been listening to the radio a lot lately because of my new commute to west LA.  I believe that westwood and santa monica is the asshole of Los Angeles, dirty, mean, and nasty.  The traffic is the worst and my road rage isn’t as intense because i’m beginning to not care about anyone.  I mean, I was in stop and go traffic, mean you, I drive stick, so my left leg is getting quite ‘buff’, and this man is exposing himself on westwood.  Like straight up, pants down, poop butt mooning all the people in traffic.  He seemed a bit crazy–not at least not quite there.  But still, butt naked at 4pm.  It made my drive all that more interesting and I didn’t mind that everyone was cutting me off, right and left, honking and cussing and texting with both hands.  This doesn’t make me feel confident about those driving around me. I sense an accident everyday and pray that it isn’t my car they are careeming into.  Speaking of outrageous accidents, did you hear about the death of the poor baby at the last LA artwalk?  Alex and I were 2 blocks down from the accident, and I guess LA is taking more precaution for traffic safety and crowd control.  It gets pretty crazy for the artwalk, like everyone suddenly becomes a bit maniac and tries to absorb as much art and culture as possible in a span of 2 hours.  People elbowing and throwing jabs to get through the thick swarm of people.  Back to the airwaves, maybe its just rambling that I would do, but I hope to inspire those who would bother to listen. Play some old folk music and read aloud from a random book.  Recite a poem or two, learn to beat box. Maybe its the rebellion and revolution that attracts me. In the last 2 days, I’ve watched two inspiring movies.  The first is Machete, and the second is Pump Up the Volume.  Both deal with the masses standing up and fighting for what they believe in.  Both deal with characters that are a bit legendary in their own rights, that they represent symbols of hope and justice for their respective communities.  I wish to be apart of that hope and justice.  I wish to be a play in this revolution.  I know that my role is intrinsic to the resistance.  That there is too much that wishes to push us down, devalue our time and energy into creating art, tell us that it isn’t worth it, that we need to get a better job, that we shouldn’t waste our lives.  I say, fuck that attitude. Without the makers and players of art, where would the state of your imagination be?  Where would innovation be?  Where would invention come into play?

Audre Lorde says that poetry is a necessity, that is the agency that it takes to write that gives women autonomy.  And with that, god bless.

peace and power to the people, a’misa

Dear My Dear

Oops, you dropped your hanky on the floor, and pardon, we almost bumped heads.  And as I scurried away from you, embarrassed of my foibles and quite clumsy nature, I forgot to hand back your hanky.  I was holding it, feeling the lace and cotton on my fingertips.  It smelled of dried yellow flower muddled with a faint hint of chamomile and lavender.  It smelled of a sunny day on a wide open meadow, of running around and getting nettles and grass blades stuck in your braids.  The breeze rushed through you like a spirit gliding across the water, straight into you, inhabiting you, feeling and being you.  Did it leave, or did it find its home in you, the breeze, I mean.

I should have called out your name, that you forgot something.  Oh dear, my dear, you forgot your… But no sound came forth. I muttered, h..h…h…e..llo.  Sounding like a king’s speech, my honest pauper’s prayer.  You walked away and I was left holding something of yours.  I followed you across the courtyard, since unabled with speech.  My legs moved and I kept my eye on your flittering and thrashing fabric of the blue dress you wore that day.  The town was busy and bustling, like any mid-morning mid-week ever was, and I tailed you for the duration of your walk.  You disappeared suddenly, you must have dodged into a building and gone up into your living quarters.  I took to get a cofffee and write you this note, while I look for a door to place it upon, so I can give you back your hanky and buy you some coffee.

xoxo

Dear Tiff,

I’ve been writing to you for years.  Our giggles wrapped inside of a teatowel, blown into a great big conch shell, tucked into the torned pile of napkin that settles into a comfortable mound on the table of a local denny’s diner.  We had pulled all of our teeth out that night, we needed money the next day.  Was it Disneyland, or camp? Dental floss and a doorknob, just like in the movies. We ripped out about six teeth that night, and were rolling in dollar bills by the weekend.  Our mouths took the sacrifice, as we ached and spoke softly for days to come.  Our remaining molars reveled in the glorious melting sugar crystals of cotton candy and funnel cake at some amusement park somewhere in orange county.

Question:  Do you like roller coasters?  I forget, if I even like roller coasters.  I use to love them.  Screaming, and on the brink of that point where your stomach flip flops.  We once did cherry bombs off the jungle gym.   One girl slammed her face into the sand, I just saw her tonight, this time as a Nisei Week princess.  Royalty as politicians is interesting.

I am praying for you my sister.  Praying that you are safe from harm, and that you are happy.  The air is gettting thicker out here.  I inhale the smoke daily, and smoke in myself.  We might move soon, to be closer to those like you.  Be amongst that which speaks truth.  It’s hard sometimes out here, dark and lonely.  The crows have talons and hop around near my front door.  Write back soon.  [love, a]