Tripas by Brandon Som

Author:Brandon Som
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2023-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

DIAGRAM

The physicist Faraday drew “lines of force”

with iron filings, lithe as eyelashes, across

the waxed paper he set atop bar magnets.

A chiaroscuro, the diagram connects the dots

to those homing birds with beaks that act

as lodestones. One of the two characters

in the Chinese word for compass has a net

for catching birds. With only the papers

for Colombia, the number-four son made

a plan with his older brother, the oldest

of that generation, a sojourner who settled

down in the States. The younger brother

would take a flight with a layover in Phoenix,

where a doctor, the family knew, could

diagnose him with some medical excuse.

They chose an ear infection. The Latin sews

together with step or pace. Charging one

ion, we compass compassion. What wires

a poem’s enjambment, its bandwidth between,

like a field of hidden ribbon? Their plan

didn’t work. My uncle spent four years

in back kitchens in Bogotá learning Spanish

before his English, which he pieced together

eventually back in Phoenix working the line

at Motorola—same plant my nana worked

with her perfect attendance. They never met.

What diagrams me—Malinchino, Pochinero,

Xicanese? A knockoff from open sources,

makeshift & hacked from component bins.

Chop suey, that all-American dish, means

“mixed pieces.” I imagine them passing now

& then in the break room or at the time clock.

The inner ear is also called the labyrinth.

It contains the cochlea—little snail shell

or screw—& that network of boney canals

essential for balance. In the Western myth

the quills are dipped in wax, like wax were ink

—as if to write wing. Was that labyrinth’s

design based on the human ear? The echo

in the hecho would suggest endless sources,

“byzantine supply chains.” Oreja of course

is the Spanish. I hear its or & think of sound

as a series of alternatives—a kind of hyphen

-omenology: how within parallel circuits

currents increase across increased resistance.

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