Witness, and: Ode to Glass, and: Rear Window, and: One Foot, and: Las Meninas / The Maids of Honor

Witness

My cousin Sonny missions with her kids in the Philippines.

In Pittsburgh, Constance and Reyanne come to the door. We've met before at another address.

Through the lead-glass window: they straighten their scarves, teeth, when they hear footsteps clanging near the door.

They don't remember my stream-lined teeth, my globy lips or eyes from all the heads they meet.

My cousin Sonny's a Witness, too, I tell them. She missions with her kids in the Philippines.

Down Atlantic Avenue, a year before, I said, Come back and meet Faith, the owner. She's new in town and needs to make more friends.

Today, they ask if I follow faith and I decline, an atheist. And they ring their knuckles—screw fingers around their moldy joints like a nut-cracker's teeth.

My cousin Jing Jing—Sonny's sister—a Witness, too, I say as they clang the pages of their good books, fingering for a tooth of conversation.

Constance and Reyanne don't rush into talking. Mornings, they buzz by the doors like flies.

And I'm patient with them—out of respect for the cousins—while teeming in the hot, Pittsburgh dust I carry in a suitcase from home to home.

Jing Jing is my favorite name, is what I long to tell them. What's your favorite name? I long to ask.

Once, in Seattle, I was bald and breezes slid easily from my gut. I'd say, Make like the Jehovah's Witnesses and count me out.

Once, Sonny and Jing came out to the S.F. Airport to see Puring and me as we stretched our good leg out to the Philippines.

They kept a glowy silence about my head as we teetered past the clanging Krishnas.

Love balled through my bare skin. A brilliant passport.

In the P.I., Puring and I visited Uncle Ulpiano—their father—a stroke had left a golden sore in his eye.

Faith is a foto of Ulpe, a Ranger in WWII, closed in the dusty pages of a book, his corners shrunken and torn, footless from all the marching.

A friend of my grandfather's taught Ulpe to read. For the god's-sake of this story, we'll call her Faith.

Constance and Reyanne smile when I say: "I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love"; then they frown, "Our souls just mush under boot soles, long to be eaten by grassy teeth."

Ulpe doesn't recognize my brilliant head. Thinks I'm the younger brother. My name nonsense.

With the Pacific conquered, Truman took the ones who read and sent the rest packing.

When Constance and Reyanne hit the books again, I want to say, faith and belief, a foggy bathroom mirror, a raincoat on the man who drags a suitcase full of dictionaries door to door.

Today's forecast, humidity: I heat myself, I heat my hand, I heat the air inside my hand like a handful of warm, glass marbles.

I can't believe they call me Sister anyway. When they're just Constance and Reyanne to me, the same as Jing and Sonny.

Their pamphlet charges to my sweat, releases a green sore of ink in my palm.

Ode to Glass

After its lipsthe bottle flares outlike the A-line ofa girl's skirtwhen she twirlsat recess.

On the descentthe company's crest—one red and one bluecrescent about toclasp togetherinto a globebut betweenthem, the nameof the soda sitsin bold, white letters.

Then, belowthe slogan's frame the tiny print:contenido neto 355 ml,and hecho en Mexico,in a perfectlyexecuted paint.

Partway downthe bottle cornersinto a barrel-shape,the swiveled glass,the same as stripesof a barber's pole, forcesthe eye to followand twist along itsblurred contours,the way skin blursthe contours ofan arm so youslow down into...