Felino A. Soriano

from This is how my Speaking Moves

Recalling









__________
By now, the lyric doesn’t resonate.  
Said of its vocal momentum, enough is the 
waiting my jawline tires from associated 
mimicking.  I sing until the melody begins:
echoes curled into repetitious absence.  
Morning learns my body, knows 
the rusting voice of my healing spine, lento.  
Afternoon explains adjusted orientation: the
body now warmer, each finger across the spine
has awakened multilingual music, and 
the movement awaiting me will be a facet
of remembering far into the evening of how
each of my eyes will braid their eventual
fruition.









__________
Me?, I’m of my father’s disposition.  Fire (
my rendition, though, soft in its initial
reach north, prior to the voice’s ability
to strangle upon adrenaline igniting
me into a separate body, separate 
lexicon of untiring impulse, interpretation
).  Then, of my mother’s susurrant eyes.
Combination containing husband, father, 
grandfather: dimensional identity into
seeing my ability to walk in spectral
prayers, answered and shed from
the holding hands of a doubting
contamination.









__________
I’ve thought about how this’ll end.
This.  Deepened home, multilevel,
multi________.  An end is the great
-est breath twirling, visual.  What’s
invented is a turnstile math, awaiting
hands to complete complexities
of unknown remainders, walking
-through—unneeded, the hop over
doctrine.  Birth has retained
me long enough, and this middle
life function is a handful of excogitated
philosophies




Portrait of How I Listen

Falling then finding

             rhythm.  The hymn of it.  Each
             voice of participating watching, (under my pillow, between
             architecture of dragonfly alphabets)
             earn what needs your
prosaic whisper, the
freedom to initiate
interpretive sitting,
             or the ornate
             modulation each
             clap and wave the
             hands invent to
oscillate within the function
of harmony’s organic heredity.  

   Why this jazz draws
  tears south upon my aging 
    I’ve an almost answer:

                         piano voice of my ghost
            soloing

                                  intentional harm into woven histories

            reminding of

                                             vacancies of my absent effort, my
                                                                           joy subtracted
within the silence my
fading vision articulates




Early Instauration
                               —for my father

     Part of my childhood hand
  still holds
                 the tambourine.  Band practice.  To it with you
        I’d travel, yellow Camaro, smiling, my forest green     corduroy shorts
            detailing summer wear
        on this coast identified by beach, wind
                                        and
    electronic silence at midnight.  We’d
     arrive—

scents of lumpia, rice, pancit (trilogy of my favorite meal)

                                                   welcomed our batches of comfort     and
             purpose.

                                         Dad 
                            singing

                                                                    me
                                                    watching
                                                                                           listening
                                   engraving
             sound

                                  into and unknown version of an older, first person response—

barstool housed me, my particular 
interest in rhythm and the legato
cultivation of my dad’s vibratory
voice.                                            This garage a world stage, my
                                                     feet dangling from the stool, such
                                                     as two crows circling     synced
                                                     within the order of mobile adaptations—




Trio of Multilingual Pianoing (or what heals in the development of sound, sound)
—after Robert Glasper, Jason Moran, & Craig Taborn

i

Origin certainty     the blend of
   a diameter’s philosophy to
return     even                 death.     Momentum toward me.  Toward me a window
                                                               of multiplying sceneries, bodies leaping
                                                         landing
 organic in pulsing joy,
pausing fiction of
   
desolate discoveries.  Introverted dragonflies visit,     
abscond in ascending numerical anticipation.  Gilded 
these rhythms, guiding within slanted syntax rain 
conveys amid prayer and division of hours’ articulating
                                                                                                                       
                                                                                     harmonies.

What I’ve done     a miracle to what 
watches my x-rayed meditation.  

                                                   Overheard, 
circulations of wing-oscillation,
 verbs undulating, overwhelming noun
anticipating chant, echo and the 
  fade

         -in fulcrum lending warmth
  amid a nonchalant noon’s anatomy
    of winter’s cultivated clichés.  Too 
 many of me to continue counting.  I’ve
   begun subtracting.  Now, what the sentiment
draws across me equates to my father’s
     innate stairway climbing toward the
  memory-hover high in meaning     in mentoring:
        authenticity begins in your feet; swell 
   within them, learn their pain in side
-stepping grouped addiction to same size
     articulation of simple syllables defining     another’s mirror’s fatigue

ii

Cup of sound, glass of cadence, |transparent veneration|,
—each reveal of curtain
undresses light in the angle
of its meaning, origin of
curled fingers ballet|ing|
nearer to soul wearing
halo and configurative
language amid cold
energy before a death
invites itself to bother.  This
is when night is both sad
-dened and crawling toward
morning’s eventual embrace,
interrogation of saddened
shadows.  Daytime, an
intertwining of monologues,
birth-wearing versions 
of effectual maturation, |upheld prophecy|,
—beside my hearing a
duo of scent wears
my curious directional
lead, holding what hand
I’m choosing to deny cold and
the closure of curtain among
an hour’s figurative display
of esoteric hiding

iii

     Water, as wardrobe     its consistent undress
  -ing of sound, movement, all measurable momentum—


      plural.  Here is what history becomes.  Voice or
    legend     calm in the mobility of predetermined
        alterations.  As with.  Body.  Arid 
                                        alternatives
    to mensurable deluge
          delivers 
         comparable markings
  identified     cultivated     redefined

      to contain clarity of nuance and

      multilayered evidence/s/.  This is
           what history spoke of
        when language was uncompromising,
             lacking of lie and achromatic
         function—




__________
   formation confirmation, hearsay
  needn’t exist upon the mouth’s
     architectural 

                          truths     with alternate tongues
       erasing
  silent flames 

  creating insensate 


            freedoms unrelated to warmth and
    how the body responds when healing


                       orthogonal to a stone’s
      immovable rhetoric—
__________ 




Quintet of Soloing Toward It

__________
Trumpet

     Visceral     closed-gate     mouth
  a tightening mention to what
    moves my tongue 

  initiating imitation: why wales
  call me private, the

body
        seeing into 
my mirror’s soon

                        obsolete
remembering




__________
Saxophone

  Promissory.  Desolate
 wind wrapping worry
around what’s buried

                   beneath organic reason, each apparitional
      tone
sharing shape, my sharing swollen character

fragmented, searching exterior to engage whole

                                           momentums allotted to

flail




__________
Piano

Coincidental dexterity.  Here
  I’m home—dance, awaken     breathe.  Too much 
                                                                              constellation
is never realized, the and of
   its purpose erased or
  burned by voices un
-able to hear beyond
    the tongue of their own

                       singed approximation—




__________
Bass

                 Each of my bodies
           bending, a
              realization among

            sustained origami notions.  Vibratory
   syllables, the fingering
      sway
     prose meanders spine and 

oscillating tributes to personal configurations—
  then is what calls to my hearing appearing later

after death

after breath succumbs to disconsolate mathematics 




__________
Drums

                   Cultivation our
    conversation
 our
        becoming within rhythm

within focal connection to 
approach within camouflaged silence—
Listen to what new morning brings,
eventual timing curtails
wandering into moments’
system of awakening 
dialogical insinuations 
           



Compositional North

i

   Within a noon full of steam rising.  A
 rosary of crows, bell-sound-ing   the whole
      of its nascent brilliance    near-halo

contribution for those in the peace-search
 diagram of dialectical faith observation.

I’ve pivoted
back
          toward the piano’s normalized construct:

pace     splay     layout     emphasis     subtle
 
            broken heirlooms sudden-on
the backside configuration of my
        hands’ losing rhythm.  Cancer.

                                                                     Much of its
articulated poison or a fear into 
my tongue’s good use

           no one expands beyond an understood

dissection my language moves into rhythm

unintentional

ii

    Burned wind the scented
hollow

its whispering leverage a
formulated finding

    among the trumpet’s autumn
  excavation of obligatory tone⎯




Conjoined Listening

  Recondite this psalm

                     I’ve organized

into the relevance of aging prose

      upon italicizing

its analytical weight, architectural joining of

       this neoteric etched growth upon palm and
the other version of hiding what has found me     dying




__________




I hear my father’s teaching me through voice,
    an Al Green rendition
                         
                         a
          surplus of angular space redirect
-ing my hands away from 

      speech and into the listening whole of

what my mother does best:




                    Love

                


Upon Hearing
Or What the Drumming Represents

Coax is open-curtain geometry—
   the solid O of an open eye
 gaining radius search as skill and find as
      formulated proverbs.  

              Each
   night since dad died
        

            I’ve erased a notion through the death of its absconded fruition.  Long
            way home still finds me searching.  Home is a broken leg unhealed but
            strong in the sense to allow asymmetry’s logic to rebuild smaller rooms. 




__________
I’ve attempted riot
 but find the pocket
too smooth from which to 
   remove myself exterior
 to these drums
__________




                                              An exhaled fiction fixates     the fulcrum
       of reliant what was said
       bridges the soloing of
       nuance with the language
       needed to upend where
       this death will confine 
me



Cultivated

The breath from you
always informs how
I need my body to
increment.  Each gradation
an eventual momentum,
a motivated need to later
conceal     hides within the 
standing bass’ ornamental
influence. The eye of
an organic moment
slides rhythm into
bones, my incessant
glide toward hearing
and having fullness of
what was once fractioned
in the marrow of a silent
interpretation 

Felino A. Soriano was awarded the 2017 erbacce-prize for poetry. His writings appear in CHURN, BlazeVOX, 3:AM Magazine, The National Poetry Review, Small Po[r]tions, and elsewhere. His books of poetry include A Searching for Full Body Syllables: fragmented olio, Aging within these syllables (2017), Acclimated Recollections (2017), and Vocal Apparitions: New & Selected Poems: 2012 – 2016 (2016).

Visit Of the poetry this jazz portends for more information.
 
 
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