A THING SHE TOOK AWAY: TWO POEMS
1. FABIANNE GEISMAR, 15 : A DEATH IN HAITI
Shot dead for stealing mirrors.
---Headline, The Toronto Star, Catastrophe in Haiti, Jan 20, 2009, Pg. 19
While the temblor's carrion burn
in common graves unnamed,
you have a name to go by, and
will have confreres wail to mourn
your falling on brittle rubble,
mirror clutched as you would a rag doll
if you had a more innocent childhood,
if you even were a lass in pigtails
or braids or ribbons or princess veils,
and did not have to scrounge for food
or even think that a purloined mirror
is a prize too precious to die for.
O, Fabianne, would you have seen
a flushed reflection of the fairest face
this wounded city has haplessly hidden
in unforgiving debris of shattered grace?
Or would you have recoiled from scars
on scars that faces become inured to
seen through cracks of shattered mirrors?
---ALBERT B. CASUGA
Shot dead for stealing mirrors.
---Headline, The Toronto Star, Catastrophe in Haiti, Jan 20, 2009, Pg. 19
While the temblor's carrion burn
in common graves unnamed,
you have a name to go by, and
will have confreres wail to mourn
your falling on brittle rubble,
mirror clutched as you would a rag doll
if you had a more innocent childhood,
if you even were a lass in pigtails
or braids or ribbons or princess veils,
and did not have to scrounge for food
or even think that a purloined mirror
is a prize too precious to die for.
O, Fabianne, would you have seen
a flushed reflection of the fairest face
this wounded city has haplessly hidden
in unforgiving debris of shattered grace?
Or would you have recoiled from scars
on scars that faces become inured to
seen through cracks of shattered mirrors?
---ALBERT B. CASUGA
2. THE MIRROR
When the face looks back at itself/ from the mirror, what does it see?
---From “First
One, Then the Other” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa
Was it Fabianne Geismar’s* fantasy, lifting that
mirror?
Mirror as loot in temblor-stricken Haiti is fantasy
enough for that crumpled lass on the rubble of
Haiti.
Haiti made sure the lass absconded too with enough
bullets in her brain, rending a dream of seeing her
face
face itself in a purloined vanity piece pocked with
bullets
when retrieved for Wal-Mart from her tight embrace.
Embrace your mirror, girl, a trophy of blooming. When?
When stirrings in your haunches told you what to steal?
Steal the heart of that lad staring at you with shy lust:
lust for love, for all that wreckage allows you to steal
so you can see your mouth that will kiss him, your eyes,
eyes that will shape him in your breasts, your so…
So supple body ripened quickly to life’s urgent quiver.
*
SHOT DEAD FOR
STEALING MIRRORS. Fabianne Geismar, 15, was shot by police
pursuing looters.---Headline and Caption, The Toronto Star, Catastrophe in Haiti,
Jan 20, 2009, Pg. 19
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