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Cristina Querrer
Being born and raised in the Phillipines and then transplanted to Connecticut since 1985 (off and on) during those uncertain times, has brought me a world of experiences in itself. Especially to someone whose senses were keen and perspectives a bit muted. But whatever in this place has certainty? Always, we walk on ambigous ground, boundaries. In some shape, imperfection resides. And somehow in what we are given, we must smoothen out the wrinkles, perhaps tears and sometimes, total dismemberment.
Despite broken trails, due to being Amerasian and a product of the Vietnam War, I have always struggled to make my own. Whether my path zig-zagged and sometimes just giving the illusion of the straight and narrow. I pride myself in ownership iregardless. I may not be well received for my nakedness or commonality. But I try to go beyond boundaries and attempt to achieve universality, from brute to beauty.
I write whenever I can, although my time is precious. For I try to give all I can to my children, Tiana and Joseph, who I know by the blink of an eye- their youth will just be photographs and sadness in the heart. Love and obsession are the meat of my poems. Loss and the fear of loss also consumes me. Having a handful of poems scattered in anthologies and on the internet, I am currently at the finishing stages of my first collection of poems. And in closing, I strive for what Pablo Neruda wrote in his poem, entitled "Sweetness Always".
Selected Works by: Cristina Querrer
Between Spaces of Words -
(For J.E.)
I even seek you out in-between spaces,
For you resound incessenatly beneath
My surfaces.
Layers upon layers of neglect
Seem no more. Now have turned rind
Into gourmet fancies of you.
I even seek you out in and around
Each syllable of your name.
Sliding on the vowels and consonants,
Slipping, falling, delighted.
How can fluidity
Be borne from such awkwardness?
And where are the controls that
Gauge this flight?
I am filled with irrelevancy.
Where measure of time preclude me.
I even seek you, seek you,
Beyond spectrums and this atmosphere-
You sheathe my mind with glorious endeavors
And the realms of possibilities.
Even when words trail off or cease to exist,
I almost forgot the world beause of you,
And for that you are immortal.
From This House
No one knows of my addiction.
So alone and seemingly still here,
And not one word I could say.
He used to walk through my backdoor,
Unannounced, but loving it so.
The way it was, this person who lived
Across the fence, who brought
A pocketful of jokes and bizarre tattoos.
Just to see him, his glow of youth,
And my collective yearnings to be
As free.
I know of my fate of which I chose.
For I am ten years ahead,
From a paralleled universe,
No matter how I looked at it.
But my eyes have since changed,
You see.
As it was, he highlighted my stay
On this little old new england street,
As summer closed into autumn.
I left just in time
To never
See the snow.
It So Happened
So our shadows have touched
In this cramped and desolate place
When the world sleeps, I lie awake
Pondering over this ocean
That washed me up
Upon your shore.
Two shadows stranded in such vastness
The vines reach out, clinging,
Quickly, onto anything close.
And you so happened to be there
When I stretched for more
Dreams to replace the saddness
Stretched out to touch the space that
So happens to be filled with you
As my arms fell
So naturally around you,
Like the invisible equator.
All There Is
I want to write all there is about you.
I want to paint the emotion of you.
I want to stay planted in your presence
and exist on this ocean liner journey.
Exhilarated by the fact that yesterday
has no bearing, when once I dreaded it so.
You fill in the blanks effortlessly.
When others would stumble and forget.
Comments and or replies might be directed too: Cristina Querrer
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