Last year all they ever asked about
was the boxer with the crumpled face
and his like-a-drag-queen-dressing momma,
until the recent media fiasco and his homophobic
sermon. This year it’s going to be nothing
but the Filipino Trump, the curfew he’s imposed;
that crying scene at his parents’ graves
where he prayed for the light of some divine
or otherworldly guidance, straight
out of a telenovela; the rape jokes, the assassin
squads, the way pictures of dead bodies
have already landed on the front pages
with eyes and hands duct-taped, signs
hung on their bludgeoned torsos saying I
am a drug dealer and a bad example to society—
Even now we’re bracing for the rhetoric of pity
and piety, the disputes that have broken out
among strangers as with kith and kin: Whose
side are you on? But as always the taxicab
of history picks up its passengers, takes them where
they think they want to go; then leaves them there.
In response to Via Negativa: Gut.