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"Haunted Town" by RowanArtC

Two poems by ​Yvanna Vien Tica

Poem in which I explain what the world is like without my hearing aids
The world spins a little
               different when it’s quiet—sunlight heaves
into its younger self,
               disrobing lifetimes the way a bird jumps to escape
its own kin. By this time,
               birdsong is nothing but a word I imagine hearing
through the news reports
               telling viewers to seek peace at all costs.
Everything is accentuated
               by sorghumed blood rushing lazily
into the ears like a whisper,
               and for once, my fists loosen their clasped mouths
shaped like hunger. Even if
               a war starts over my head, I will hear nothing but the faint
wisps of smoke. Well-meaning
               people always note how empty I must feel when deaf
and clouded over, ears just
               glasses hung by mist. Isn’t silence so demanding, waiting for you
to reveal yourself as
               a casualty of survival to the world, they explain. Outside,
I imagine the birds still
               singing for their lost children, the guns still readying
for another sharp seizure
               of laughter. Listen, there are some sounds better left
adrift for a moment, for the sun
               to claim as it grazes the horizon, searching,
and leaves for home.
Song of Solomon: An Epilogue
We find ourselves waiting
               for the sun, its steady gaze, the way
                              it spreads and blooms like warm breath
               over the earth beds still pregnant
                              with half-sowed tulips. The children play
               by the stream in the backyard, laughter
                              already bright as summer, bursting fresh
               like those Georgia peaches you
                              always tried to hide from my sharp mouth; and
               there’s a flush of vertigo in the air,
                              as if the winter slush still loitering the driveway
               permeates the dry perfume of loss.
                              To be honest, sometimes I wake in the night still thinking
               you were in the room next door, head
                              arched over a rustling page of the Psalms, drapes drawn
               and cast over you like a veil. Did I
                              ever tell you how beautiful you looked every time
               you stopped to taste the spring
                              even while the snow still pulled down the door?
               It’s startling, the years, how they
                              make you forget the slow crawl of it all. It’s as if
               I am still waiting for you to come
                              home, even after our children become someone
               else’s parents. And yet, there is
                              something comforting in the way the sun grazes
               the trees like a matriarch, how
                              the wind echoes all your laughter from many springs
               ago. As if I can always find you
                              nestling by the stream in the backyard, those Psalms
               unabashedly naked to the stars,
                              those eyes of God, He who alone knows how much
               I’ve searched for your next appearance,
                              for when everything dull and reeking of grief transmutes
               into the beautiful tapestries of spring,
                              for which we wait each year.

Yvanna Vien Tica is a hearing-impaired Filipina writer who grew up in Manila and in a suburb near Chicago. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Competition, The Kenyon Review, the Young Playwrights Festival, and has appeared or is forthcoming in the Filipino-American Chicago newspaper MEGAscene, EX/POST Magazine, DIALOGIST, and Hobart Pulp among others. She is the Editor-in-Chief of The Faith Review, a Genre Editor for Polyphony Lit, and a Poetry Editor for The Global Youth Review. In her spare time, she can be found enjoying nature and thanking God for another day.

RowanArtC feels that the work should speak for itself and invites the viewers to go wild with their imagination. The world within us (random thoughts and emotions) is a rich spring of inspiration for her work.
​
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