Cordyline

Heard my mother refer to these as Dugo ni Kristo. Dracaena might do as model for propagation, as you could note some easy  similarities in terms of leaf and stem. Soil’s wet enough for putting in cuts without pre-soaking for roots, but you’d have to put up with initial wilting.

The plant might serve for marking a plot of ginger, turmeric, or more garlic. Maybe a row of eggplant, come summer.

Cordyline could fence the yard itself. Malunggay presents another fence option, along with other contenders: Auntie’s flowers (cans are overflowing), Mother-in-law’s tongue, or Song of India.

Properties—air

Homemade Cemetery

Start on the ground or start with finished
visitors that will bear upon entering
in layers rather than vertically. The more surface
crying out for air. This is your cue to stab and

Gate, a large concrete tripod with a stairway
leading to an eyeball the size of the bulk you put into
the dignity of his birth, but I do know the glory

When you cut your grass or rake up
marble pillars representing the three brown
islands: twigs, sticks, dried leaves—

Inscripted on the tomb are the words
discharged from the judgment of an offense

Not everything breaks down easily

M A R S

through the Lacabas


Death pure with love
Unbounds, departs, returns

The vulture sits on my
Eye

Rust in the twilight sky
That defy damp

Emancipation’s breath
The vulture stirs

Unbounds, departs, returns

To pluck out a grave fist
A god out of sight.

9 poems

permissible land animals

The bookshop was abducted

6 Erasures

Your Work

Garlic

Have been converting the baby’s emptied milk cans into pots, each seeded with two cloves. Twice now, Elisha and Noam have been asked to lend a hand. The cans have also been acting as a sort of fence, marking off a small rectangular plot from the girls’ play area. Worked some humus and sawdust into this bed, then seeded nine additional cloves. Sixteen sprouts so far, expecting three more, by weekend maybe.

The cans are re-purposed as they come, so it’s staggered planting, which means harvest can’t be a one-off. This set-up might encourage some useful exercise reading the leaves, that day-to-day tug between brown and green. Shuffle the cans perhaps, for a bit more challenge. Accordingly, curing will require sequence markers. Could be as simple as colored yarn: red, orange, yellow, so forth.

Damian emptied another can over the weekend. It now has soil, some organic matter, drainage holes, ants. After classes, whether or not it rains, the girls will have to put in a clove each. 

Sheet mulching with a banana leaf base

Laid the fresh leaves around the kalamansi. Not exactly along the tree's drip line, as you should have somewhere to plant a ladder for harvesting.

Braced the sheet base with wood. Layered with carbon from dry leaves of kaimito, coconut, and the kalamansi itself. Then, nitrogen from grass clippings.

Made a smaller version around the turmeric plot. At some point, all this must benefit the lemon grass and that younger avocado.

Should sprinkle in soil to mask possible smell of rotting from the greens. Or rake in more browns. Fresh leaves from birds of paradise laid over the mulch might help, as all you need is a few sunny days and you get that burnt smell from back when they ironed clothes, resting the iron on banana leaf shreds.

Mostly rain though. Should give up the big, ruined tire from my brother (brought in by my sister) as it could brace a smaller but thicker mulch, a weed layer over which will sit fourteen inches and eleven months.