Eileen Tabios

 

 

 

Goya's Yellow
                  (after Christian Hawkey's "Goya's Grotesquerie")

 

the bottom of the eye
to explore

the jeweled hood
to remove

a canopy of ex-blanket:
nightingale

the laughing women
beneath the painting

of a Yellow Rain
Caressing Yellow Cage

* * *

My version? Flesh
as canvas. Sunstruck.

Flesh as paint.
Eye the sculpted mucus

belying jaundice—
only innocence remains.

 

 

 

Nerves Say
                  (after Christian Hawkey's "The Nervous Man in a
                                Four-Dollar Room")

 

slamming doors
light switch lit
blindfold tossed away

clearing stomach
from embers
slipped through ears

the ear only a hole
for burning stones
tossed by a cruel world

 

 

 

The Eye Lets
                  (after Christian Hawkey's "I Return to the O's in
                                Oblivion")

 

Thought of an apron
(considered "eyelet")—

but it was only the moon
again drunk, damp, sodden…

wide-eyed despite
blather of melting snow

Raise the apron
into a scream

through whose eyelets
sunshine becomes tolerable—

it's a thought anyway
on behalf of those languishing

amidst shadows
especially their own