the eighth remove

call me colony.
my other littorals waiting to be.
handle, bruise.
and limbs into new kinds of clothes.
back to back, belly to belly.
a little romance of misery.
it was their usual manner to remove in brutal
           relief admissible narratives.
and limns into what’s closed.

you are not an exception.

the ninth remove

sometimes the only weapon carried is the shape of our bodies and is invisible—indivisible. in detonation annihilates the body of its bearer. who carries with it the bodies of others. and sweat: the red pearl, the black pearl, the yellow pearl. who does not know their own ballistic desire? the body does not simply conceal a weapon; it is execution and mourning. as the body dies it becomes the mark to weep on. we go dangerously, hand in hand.

the tenth remove

to effect a first dying. to effect a second dying. to effect a third dying. to effect a fourth dying. to effect a fifth dying. to effect a sixth dying. to effect a seventh dying. to effect an eighth dying. to effect a ninth dying. to effect a tenth dying. no longer has an effect.

my heart was so full that I could not speak to them. so little do we prize common mercies when we have them to the full.

the eleventh remove

if i speak from my mouth only, it doesn’t mean my heart is silent. if i release its figures from this housed cage, who will set the discarded words on fire? not even you can remove my heart from its ancestral house. once, it touched the sand and became an island. it breathes out as i breathe in so that now its breathing is my breathing. 

Sea S. Perez, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guam, has lived in California since 1995. He is a co-founder of Achiote Press and author of several chapbooks, including constellations gathered along the ecliptic (Shadowbox Press, 2007), all with ocean views (Overhere Press, 2007), and preterrain (Corollary Press, 2008). His first book, from unincorporated territory, is forthcoming this year from Tinfish Press. His poetry, essays, reviews, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in New American Writing, Pleiades, The Denver Quarterly, Jacket, Sentence, and Rain Taxi, among others.