on watching wong kar-wai’s fallen angels (1995)

         (close-up shot: the deli)

the deli is now a crossroads between
the hitman’s assistant & blondie—
she stands at the doorway wanting nothing
more than to go home, to reach over &
pull the hitman to her side & go back,
back to the apartment where he taught her
what it means to be unraveled over
& over again, back to the golden
arches of their first meeting when she sat
beside him, leaned into him for warmth,
watched the sway of his head underneath
technicolor lights & a song she fell
into, the breathlessness of his embrace,
as if he might lose this, whatever this is,
still — she sees them: hitman & assistant
/ man & woman. their interchangeable
blur of reality & film, how even then,
none of them can ever have this again.
the woman will always watch him, looking
back at her, while he walks with another,
with his jacket over their heads because
the monsoon rain has begun its downpour.

Malandi

         (adj.) flirty; a flirt; promiscuous; indiscreet

It begins with gyrating your hips, that side
to side motion, make it nice and slow. Slap
on the cherry lippie from your mom’s old
purse, that still good Tommy, then pucker
up like you do when you’ve just had the best
bowl of sinigang. The kind that only lola can
make. Pout those lips, half-listen to tsismis
about the last person who took their strikes,
flew at night, and never came home until day-
break. Until you see their lips move in your
direction. These pearl-clutching, Louis toting
titas give an inhale, deep in the belly, until
there’s nothing left for everyone else. Watch
their teeth come together and feel their tongues
give a small arch, Sst.        Listen, there it is, their
root-deep cackle before they call you landi landi.
You never knew what it could mean when your
body knows only the R&B sway, that Nicole
Scherzinger twang tellin’ you to loosen up
your buttons, babe uh-huh. It feels familiar,
years later, to read in full form again—that
roll off the tongue burrows in gums, stained
and arched.       O, what magic this makes in
the bones. When your friend describes his
girlfriend-not girlfriend—how beautiful it is
when she raises her voice, its power as she
bounds toward a higher peak once, twice,
then between shoulder blades, she too begins
to grow a pair of wings—its membrane, all
thin-veined, enshrouding her with freedom.
She bares her teeth in fullness for once.