Nick Carbo Poems

I've always wanted to play the part
of that puckish pubescent Filipino boy

in those John Wayne Pacific-War movies.
...

“I like dappled hats,” she said
as she lit the incendiary device.

He enjoyed her wet diphthongs
...

When he finds his wife in bed with another man--

The conservative politician feels an ache in his stomach,
remembers the longanisa and the tapa he had for breakfast.
...

This is where the typhoon starts—
inside the fourth paragraph,
ten city blocks away,
...

The angle of delight is best
achieved while rubbing

the pluperfect button
...

How do you enter that Manila
frame of mind, that woven
mat of noodle house restaurants,
...

In the slums of Tondo, people dwell
in shacks of cardboard, bits of bamboo,
corrugated metal, and a few cement blocks.
...

on Mulberry and Spring on a rainy night.
Her head sticks out of some woman’s tote bag
placed on top of the bar, she winks
at Ang Tunay na Lalaki. He looks at his gin and tonic,
...

Dona Josefina has thrown my goat
out onto the calle El Fez--
Ay! The menu of pain is as big
as a queen-sized aha umbrella.
...

Looking to harvest what makes him happy.
The AA meetings have thrown
him into iconoclastic jousts with Titans
and Gorgons with glowing snake eyes
...