Lawrence Ypil (b. 1978)

SELECTED POEMS

For Every Man

For every man that stumbles into a room
feeling for the door, asking himself, “What did I wish
to do here now that I’ve come?”
there is a man who stays inside.

He had a good eye once that one who squinted against
the light that slipped through a crack
the way a buckle would slip through a hole to keep the
neck from turning, the tongue from falling.

Spittle left on grit teeth when it swayed among
the leaves. Birds’ wings flattened the banana
trees as in the war of every man that chose not
to speak to himself

but chose instead to draw his signature across
a face the way a body disemboweled itself. No
body “disembowels itself.” It takes two men.

In the Manner of Thinking

In the manner of thinking
that is the thinking of the boy
sitting on a chair with his legs crossed
believing this is what thinking does
resting his elbow on his knee staring
at the ground pretending
this is what looking does to looking.

In the garden,
the photographer held the flower by its stem
while the maid thinking this was what believing meant
looked into the distance of herself while tilting her head
to that vine of hesitation to be touched

as some men might
brush their arms against each other
without looking at themselves in the eye
and in this way was the camera invented.

The Experiment of the Tropics

As a nest among the trees                 As a garden among the bigger garden of sea
Mountain                    View                    As a wish that were drawn to scale
So the idea became foldable             a mere scaffold
Discarded                     For that long-lasting thing
That revivalist thing             style                which was as the master
carpenter implied                   went beyond                    Road                Port
Nut               Bolt                 Wharf               A nail
In a railroad port                    A pipe
    that opened and closed
The central portico              The color and the texture of
A solid collonade                   of Inday’s silence
which was her sense of water flowing    across the experiment
that was the tropics                A river bank made private
A theater of night guards                                 A soda parlor
    Of that foreign good                         whisky tractor
red tin can         with the picture of a scarab                           and a quaker oat
Acquisition                               That American thing
      The good old good
      Cheese and grape
There was a tennis court in the club           where you hit a ball
and nothing returned
      We munched                   on its brandy biscuit.
      We ordered two of it.

The Nature of a City

The nature of a city is that it is built for someone else. Otherwise, a covenant. Otherwise, a show. A script was written for the hero but only on the premise that after a long bout of a lovebird illness, she was willing to be someone else. Four men did not equal four men unless the last one standing was laughing. As on a church ceiling, five devils flicked their tails snickering against the sun while a god sat on his throne and by the gesture of his right hand extolled the virtues of humanity’s diminishment. Outside, the bazaars gave and gave, but there was not enough space for: hemp, rope, basket, stone, fruit, market, screw driver, cabinet, glow. There were toys peddled outside in the street where you pulled and pulled that monkey of the self and it climbed without reaching anywhere other than itself.

by Lawrence Ypil
from The Experiment of the Tropics (2019)

 

SELECTED POEMS: “In the Time It Takes” >