Felino A. Soriano
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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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
-throughunneeded, 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.