~ Baguio City
You were the air base turned R&R
place where we could gape at
the marvel of uniformly clipped grass
and level golf ovals, each punctured
with one hole and a slender flag. There
was a place called The 19th Tee
where we could order exotic things
like chipped beef on toast or
scrapple cakes and eggs; and the Tee
Bar where our brothers and uncles
sat on stools, ordering gin tonics and
peanuts instead of San Miguel beer.
We'd bowl or play pool; and on Sundays,
listen to Tim Tesoro's band riff on
Sinatra as we ate roast turkey or $5
Porterhouse steaks. America, you were
1,764 acres of prime woodland reservation
named after the Secretary of State
in Mckinley's and Roosevelt's administrations.
America, you claim to have bought it
off the hands of a local chieftain for
a pittance, but his heirs pointed out
that the deed of transfer is dated at least
three years after his death. This
little pocket of clean American living is
what you say you made to remind you
and your armed forces personnel of the paradise
they left behind when they shipped out
to our inhospitable hills. America, even then
we were trained to stand behind
the cafeteria serving counters and fry
baskets, the manicure stations at
the beauty parlor; the popcorn machine
at the Base Theatre, the old-fashioned
shoeshine stands in front of Mile Hi. But
no Filipino used to be allowed as guest
on the base except when accompanied
by a US citizen, until the '80s and then
the expiration of the RP-US Bases Agreement.
America, though we didn't go there
that often, you're always remembered as this
nostalgic postcard from the '60s: our
mothers and aunts in miniskirts and cat-eye
glasses, big hair poufed by hairspray;
our fathers in polos or varsity sweaters and
pants. Once, an older white man winked
and stooped down to my level; he said Watch out,
someday you're going to be a heartbreaker.
Poet Luisa A. Igloria (website) is Co-Winner of the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition in Poetry for Maps for Migrants and Ghosts (Southern Illinois University Press, September 2020). She was appointed Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Virginia for 2020-22, and in 2021 received 1 of 23 Poet Laureate Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation. 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; she also teaches classes at The Muse Writers’ Center in Norfolk. 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.
The 19th Tee at Camp John Hay. You’re genius, Luisa.