Erasure poem based on The Philippines Past and Present
by Dean C. Worcester (Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine
Islands 1901–1913; Member of the Philippine Commission, 1900–1913);
in Two Volumes — With 128 Plates; New York: The Macmillan Company,
1914
From Chapter XVII, "Baguio and the Benguet Road"
*
In June 1892 sitting in a native house on a hill
anxiously awaiting the boats
we had some mysterious procedure for killing the tamarau
Meanwhile
in the
highlands of Northern Luzón there was
a region of pines and oaks even
occasional frosts
a hopeless tangle
of rankest vegetation trees draped with ferns
orchids and thick moss dripping with moisture
springs of potable water
the country was very dangerous
he would send a troop of cavalry with us
we expected to go by road as far as
Naguilian thence on horseback to Trinidad and Baguio in Benguet
Much of the way was a mere V in the earth deep mud at the bottom
the whole
countryside was buried in densest tropical vegetation
when within the space of a hundred yards
rounded knolls there were scores of places where
to have a beautiful house lot one needed only to construct driveways and go to work with a
lawn-mower
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for her manuscript Maps for Migrants and Ghosts, forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press in fall 2020. She is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of What is Left of Wings, I Ask (2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize, selected by former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey); Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She is a member of the core faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University which she directed from 2009-2015. In 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Distinguished Writer in Residence at Washington and Lee University. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, knits, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.