Patsy Asuncion
New York Times & Other Works
My Women's March poem, "One," the NY Times page in JAN 2017
​
​
​
Life shrinks or expands
in proportion to one’s courage.
– Anais Nin
One
​
ear hears another voice. One
hand touches a stranger’s. One
foot follows more. One
common trauma bubbles into one
boiling effort, the masses in one
scalded demise
by the silvered spoons, every one.
One
emboldens one
soft-spoken who encourages one
considered broken to come. One
elder listens to one
young who brings one
outed into the rung. One
persuades her almond-eyed friend afar. That one
wins over one
slightly inky sister, who hooks one
mixed-up stranger until one
earthen vessel lifts us all as one.
Patsy Asuncion
Click logo
to read 2020
Women's Initiative
​
​
​
"Finding My Words Back To You-Twenty Years With My Husband's Parkinson's"
.jpg)
American Book Award Winner
Pam Uschuk, Editor
​
Joy Harjo & Past Poet Laureate
Rita Dove, Contributors
Lonely George is Dead We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail …before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree. The feeling of respect for all species will help us recognize the noblest nature in ourselves. – Nhat Hanh
From filthy bilges of merchant ships
came furry invaders that gorged
their bellies with raw natives,
overran the islands.
Human gods later brought wolfsnails
to “biocontrol” other island creatures
as if using one life to kill another
were sanctified, but
the wolfsnails disobeyed
the human gods and slayed
scores of smaller natives.
Human gods picked favorites
among the living, like chameleons as pets,
that had huge appetites for little natives.
Loss of forest vegetation by human’s
pigs and goats drove native survivors
to the safety of mountain trees, a banishment
of innocence by entitlement.
The last survivor of his tribe, kept alive
in a lab fourteen years, Lonely George
has died, the last Hawaiian tree snail
of Achatinella apexfulva, one of the
first species discovered on the islands.
Three-fourths of snail species in Hawaii
are now extinct, forever dead. Ten remaining
species are expected to join George this decade,
a dooms day assembly line. Human gods may be unconcerned
by yet another foreigner’s death until they realize
tree snails control fungal abundance and diversity,
vital necessities. But, survival of the gods would require
they look away from their own needs first.
Patsy Asuncion
The Long Breaths of Trees
​
Trees are sanctuaries...They do not preach learning and precepts,
they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
– Herman Hesse
She stands silent, allows
temperate ribbons
of air to muss her premature leaves
born this last month
of winter.
Mother Tree
observes surrounding ponds
pardoned early
from frigid imprisonment,
black bears awakened
before the alarm buzzes,
precocious teen maple trees
with fully-developed limbs.
Undeterred by particulars
of centuries,
the massive tree’s roots rest in infinity,
in life-giving force each day,
for viability of her blended family –
from oak saplings, grizzlies and pileated woodpeckers
to wood mice, bark beetles and carpenter ants.
The symbiotic forest tribe bends
as one around season creep so everyone
optimizes uncertain times, unlike men
preoccupied with finite turfdoms.
Patsy Asuncion
Spirits, Indiana University NW
Art & Literary Journal
Vol. 31 2018
TUCK MAGAZINE
Online political, human rights and arts magazine
​
DEC 2018
http://tuckmagazine.com/2018/12/03/poetry-1855/
JAN 2019
http://tuckmagazine.com/2019/01/03/poetry-1903/
​
Fisheating Creek
Dew’s coolness heightens anticipation as the canoe
slips into chocolate silk water like a slow, meandering
water snake coiling through cypress,
its tongue taking in all the primordial sensations.
The ash and mahogany canoe encounters
hordes of buzzards crouched high up
on barren limbs like body bags.
Great Blue Herons and Pink-Billed Ibis fly just ahead;
instinct drives them from this floating intruder.
The lone hawk’s warning cry excites
Gray-Speckled Limpkins and Black-and-White winged
Wood Storks who stumble into lift-off, their shadows
painted beneath magnificent wing spans.
Florida wildlife huddles among lichen-spotted
conifers, heavy with air plants and majestic live oaks,
their muscular arms sweating in afternoon’s humid haze.
Soaking in white-hot sun, a lone alligator
smiles then slips into cooler waters near the boat.
Everywhere at water's edge there are
bustling cities of butterflies, ominous planets of hornets,
well-fed spiders from overhanging branches.
Close to journey’s end, the craft is cemented
in place by strong, blustery winds. Pushed by chance
to water’s edge, the canoe is coughed up unharmed,
eager for another adventure along this dark beauty.
Patsy Asuncion 2024 Armadillo Anthology 1997
​
64 Best Poets of 2019 Black Mountain Press
Lost at Sea
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It’s always our self we find in the sea.
-e.e. cummings
I am struck by the only snapshot I have
of my teenage biological mother.
Shoulders folded over the tidal weight
of premature responsibility, she hunches
at the edge of the frame apart
from me on my daddy’s lap
on the other side of the photo’s world
where family loses touch.
She and I stare, stark as twin coffins
while my father poses for the camera
with an immigrant’s big-toothed pride.
I harbor an early voice,
vague, a foghorn from memory’s riptides
Let her cry
as I lie alone in darkness. I don’t
know my age, but I can still feel this backwash
of vacant loss going back,
before my birth.
These two clues are all
I have of the back-alley teenager
who pushed me into this world the hook
that entices then lets me go.
My hospital records show they
were married all properly homogenized
for public viewing before I
was born but divorce records confuse
any clear story, except
the word abandonment, less than two
years after my birth. The ink on the docs, dried
decades ago, a permanent tattoo
on my skin, hidden in shame.
Beyond this physical evidence, I have nothing
of my early months with her, nothing –
no pictures of the two of us, none.
Holding me, did she smile or make funny faces?
No baby mementos, none.
Did she buy me a doll or toy guitar like hers?
No hand-me-downs, none.
Did she have a favorite hat or special ring?
This nothingness only seems to deepen
my longing, large as the lunar sea.
Patsy Asuncion
Bridgewater College anthology 2019,
celebrating Walt Whitman's
200th birthday.
Click book, available on Amazon,
to read my poem, "Remains."