#eileen tabios

Martha talks with Brian Kimmel about Blue Skies, Troubled Waters, a World War II account of an Indonesian American girl. We listen to Zora Neale Hurston sing and Tony visits her hometown celebration. Also, Eileen Tabios on Kendrick Lamar's half-time show, Henry Dumas' "Love Song" as a chorale.

Eileen R. Tabios has released collections of poetry, fiction, art, essays, and experimental writings from publishers around the world. Recent releases include her second novel The Balikbayan Artist; an autobiography, THE INVENTOR; a poetry collection Beca

The Listen & Be Heard Hour for Readers & Writerss2e29 Eileen R. Tabios Poet, Author Eileen R. Tabios has released collections of poetry, fiction, art, essays, and experimental writings from publishers around the world. Recent releases include her second novel The Balikbayan Artist; an autobiography, THE INVENTOR; a poetry collection Because I Love You, I Become War; an art monograph, Drawing…

Martha talks with Eileen Tabios, author of The Inventor, A Poet’s Transcolonial Autobiography, and, Eileen Tabios, The Inventor, A Poet’s Transcolonial Autobiography. Professor Jonathan Storm, Field Guide to the Southern Piedmont. Phil Talbot, Anne Mar...

s2e29 Eileen R. Tabios, Professor Jonathan Storm, Phil Talbot, Anne Marina Pellicciotto An inventor of poetic forms, a free field guide to the Piedmont, poetry, publishing & resistance. [link to transcript] SHOW NOTES s2e29September 19, 2024 view image Martha talks with Eileen Tabios, author of The Inventor, A Poet’s Transcolonial Autobiography, and, Professor Jonathan Storm, from USC of the…

#EileenTabios #poetry #asianheritagemonth

I consider the woman’s choice in liberating a red dress with pale-green sandals. My penury depresses me into a staring contest with a melting ice cube. A friend excited my husband with an invitation to pilot a boat with powerful thrusters. My gift of chocolate in pink cellophane failed to make the blonde smile. Consequently, I remind the party-goers that Trans World Airlines painted a new night…

Read more at Inquirer

— by Walter Ang: Filipino American publishing house Paloma Press has released short story collection Pagpag: The Dictator’s Aftermath in the Diaspora by Eileen Tabios…

Image courtesy of Paloma Press

Eileen Tabios - from the Thorn Rosary

Lime coats the thick sheaf of paper crossed by thin, parallel lines of a darker green. They approximate the rippling surface of a river pregnant with water and smoothly traveling towards an orb of sea salt. His pen is a black crow against a sunlit sky. Its ink is harsh, blotting paper, even with the neat economy of motion in how the ink is laid. For a moment, a golden spark glints from a cufflink struck by a sun ray. Meticulously, the ink travels from point to point, dipping, then rising, then dipping again until it is halted by one of the four walls of a square. The paper mottles. He lays the pen besides the projection of a likelihood as an ache begins between his shoulder blades. As he rolls his head in a circle, he considers the placement of a decimal point. Lastly, he considers the definition of a percentage to be the probability of error instead of the probability of an answer’s relevance.

* It seems a secretary with large hair is shuffling until he notices that it is only a tight skirt hampering her thighs. He begins to feel the papers stacked on a crudenza curling their edges to protest being ignored. A lock of hair falls in front of his eyeballs and he notices a white feather. He immediately comprehends how long it has been since scissors tip-toed about his scalp. Bereft, he looks at his desk and is astonished at how still his fingers lie atop a yellow pad—he would have sworn his fear would have left his empty palms quaking at how time is consistently ending.

* He looks up to be surprised at midnight “a done deal.” His hands seek release and he wipes them against the pin-striped wool encasing his thighs. A woman with a blurred face atop a blue silk shirt pops her head through the door. He knows she is speaking but his gaze cannot locate the source of the buzzing. He feels a fleeting thought of inebriated bees, how they might blunder with pollen gratuitously. His gaze falls to the circle of diamonds on her left, blue-veined wrist. He takes a chance and replies, “Yes.” It is sufficient to make her go away so that all that remains across his threshold is the shadow of a door. He feels he must complete the job by shutting a door but he is so tired.

* Was I ever a boy? he asks himself as he watches the Chairman hold hands with his tall wife. The wife smiles but it is clear she is dangling her legs over a pedestal. When he reaches them for an obligatory greeting, he realizes (without being surprised at the certainty of this thought) that she smells expensive. He hears her emerald earrings tinkle like wind chimes. His breath is the breeze against her pale, seamless skin. She smiles at him and he feels even smaller. His breath is the flutter of a Trochilidae’s wings. When he next turns to the Chairman, he is buffeted by the Chairman’s smug grin.

* He tattoos his fingerprints on the most random of surfaces. It happens that way each morning when he must read six newspapers beside The Wall Street Journal. One is in Japanese. Another in German. He cannot recall the last time he was lucid. He cuts himself shaving whenever the mirror reminds him that his eyes are covered by red cracks. They remind him of bigger faultlines just waiting to widen. He knows he will fold into himself during the fall. He feels that avoidance should be under his control. But it is not happening and he is often immobilized by this failure.

* I should fall in love, he thinks, as he reads a worn newspaper clipping. It has traveled throughout the firm and reached him at last. He flinches at the leers clinging to the message. His fingers feel wet though the clipping is dry. The clipping is about Alan “Swift” Thiessen, the man who once sat in an office down the hall. Once, Swift was a tight muscle tightly sheathed in Italian suits with double-breasted blazers, a sartorial sun amidst the human commodities forging together a partnership. It was an eccentricity allowed by Swift’s ability to bleed rain from desiccated clients. Once, Swift also played squash every day. Now, Swift is clad in rough cotton and measures each passing moment in a jail, staring at rust and bricks. The newspaper reports how Swift went too far with a young, blonde boy sheathed in leather with metal studs. Still, The Investment Banker suggests to himself that he fall in love. Despite Swift’s ignominious end, he feels that Swift still bested him by having felt certain compulsions about which he can only remain curious.

unrequited is owned and operated

unrequited is so much more pretty than unwanted

unrequited is the moving story of a love that wasn’t meant to be

unrequited is a crushing yoke; but if you see love as a game…

unrequited is the worst state to be aware of

unrequited is a damp match at the worst possible time

unrequited is something that crops up in your songs

unrequited is all i see

unrequited is star

unrequited is a different story

unrequited is a tune that reminds me of time spent in geneva

unrequited is a two part invention for piano

unrequited is an acute tension that worked baudelaire to the bone

unrequited is a bladed word

unrequited is underscored with both rumbling bass baritones and lilting vocals

unrequited is quelled

unrequited is so meltingly done

unrequited is my longing for a name i dare not say

unrequited is far more important then what is

unrequited is up to the gentle reader

unrequited is the saddest love of all

unrequited is not annulled simply by graciousness

unrequited is always worth cherishing