Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Doors to abandoned houses
swing on hinges.
Scraps of washing still hang
on the line.
The pattern on this curtain
is native to this region—
Yellow and vermillion braids,
tiny knots at intervals.
Crossed threads in one corner
mean some ceremony like a wedding.
Do not defile the air soaked
with moonlight and their marked
absence with useless questions,
with remonstrance, with lies.
Do you want me to tell
you a story that resists
interpretation but not feeling?
Last night a hard frost
descended on the hills.
The farmers rose
in the morning
and in their hands,
all the beautiful,
purple-rimmed cabbages
felt like skulls slowly
softening into rot.
When I was born I was not given
a name equivalent to “Fragrant
Blossom” or “Perfect
Fulfillment.” It took
six years before they
found me ready for a rite
of baptism. Was it because
I was sick so much, shortly
after exiting the womb?
Instead of candle
flame and holy water,
they wished to trick
the gods into believing
I was some wolf child
or changeling,
some stray that came
limping into a basket left
at the door. They called me
with strings of syllables,
sounds made by clicking
the tongue against
the roof of the mouth—
my first lullabies, shadows of
the child I should have been.
At the station, when a man
lost consciousness and fell face-
down on the moving escalator, a throng
gathered quickly at the base to pull
him to safety. A woman came through
the barrier, saying “I’m a doctor.”
The station manager activated the safety
switch and called for an ambulance.
A young man with a skateboard under
his arm rummaged in his backpack
for a gym towel to stanch the bleeding.
The emergency response team arrived
with a pallet and a gurney. All this
happened swiftly, with very few words
exchanged— only the movement of hands
and bodies wanting to save: strangers
lifting the stricken one, instead of
leaving him to possibly languish
in a pool of his own blood; there
in the middle of the city, on a grimy
platform that shuddered every now
and then as trains hurtled past.
Three months after the election and still
I scratch my head at the incongruity
every time I learn about yet another
Filipino American who’s voted
for the current president. Some of them
are friends! former classmates! A student
reported the day after the election,
glumly, that his own parents also voted
for the sadly now incumbent. I want to shake
them by the shoulders— gently, but shake them
nonetheless— and say brother, sister, kapatid,
what’s the color of the face that looks out
at you from the mirror when you make hilamos
every morning? And did you hear that our
country of origin has been added to the list
of seven on that Muslim ban? Even if you’re
naturalized; even if you have a green
card; even if you’ve lived here most of your
adult life, dutifully sending money and an annual
Balikbayan Box back to your folks in the province,
amply furnishing that fantasy of the American Dream
with your two-car garage, your two-door refrigerator
with programmable ice dispenser, your Magic Sing and
Singtronic Karaoke Machine— one misplaced lisp
and they’ll think you’re FOB; one look at you
and they’ll ask why you’re falsely practicing
medicine or nursing and will ask for a “real”
professional; one look at you and they’ll demand
proof of your ability to teach history or English
or mathematics to their child. And is it this
that’s fueled your love for designer this
and that and everything? that fear of being
mistaken for the maid or the driver or the houseboy,
leading to a carefully curated list of expensive
desires? Ah is it still so hard to love our many
times colonized bodies, that memory of indios
stuck in the mud and muck of the fields
while the landlord rode by on horseback
or picked one of our wives or daughters
to take to the shed and bed?
Why else did we laugh and jeer
back in the day at Elizabeth Ramsey,
half black (Jamaican father) and half
Filipino (Visayan mother) as she belted
out her meanest Proud Mary on live TV?
She would have made Tina Turner proud,
but all we did was point to her ‘fro,
her full lips and dark skin,
and chant Negrita, Negrita, as if she
too was like one of those Aetas
we were always scaring our children
would come down from the mountains
to take them away if they were bad.
I have news for you, said Carlos
Bulosan during the emaciated years
of the Great American Depression—
a phrase so full of ambivalence it’s
like an Alt Fact for that poor sad time
in 1920s America when the crops—
garlic, asparagus, grapes— would all
have rotted in the fields or on the vine
were it not for cheap stoop labor—
migrant labor— provided by some of our
forefathers up and down the California
coast. I have news for you, and it is that
I have discovered it is a crime to be
a Filipino in America today. Then
and now, Carlos; then and now—
unless we join with our other sisters
and brothers protesting in the streets,
refusing to be written off, fucked over,
or otherwise relegated to history.
Who comes from the southeast
carrying quiet threats?
Who comes from the north
wielding a stone of compassion?
Where I stand in the yard
staking a persimmon sapling,
a lash of wind feels like
the tip of an oncoming army.
Who comes from the east
flapping broad, inky wings?
I hurry without showing my hurry
into the labyrinth of my nest.
My dearest treasure hides as one
crystal in a handful of salt.
Night after night, resisting
with bites of food, a few
more piles of work
then shot glasses filled
with tinctures that mimic
the bracing heart of a wood—
Everything’s still shrouded
with the chill of winter,
and sleep is the angel
that wants to guide our feet
toward the tomb. But we won’t
practice those songs yet.
We’ll waltz away at dawn, hungry
for strong black coffee and bread.
In response to Via Negativa: Bookworm.
Look here, he said,
gathering up coins
from his coat pockets
and filling the jar
we kept by the door.
Copper and nickel,
zinc and old bronze.
Every bit caught by
our prudent means.
He said, Sooner
than you think we’ll
grow those dreams.
The sleeves of his jacket
thin in patches. Sharp
creased collars, that good
cotton smell from a hot iron.
I loved when we walked
to the library and looked
at books and globes and maps.
When he turned to a page
and pointed, in my mind I saw
a street on the other side
of the world, the house (gone now)
where I was born; even the pigeons
that roosted in the eaves knew
the syllables of our names.
In response to Via Negativa: Free trade.
Not everything we need
is granted. For instance,
there is the outhouse.
There is the boat
with its lock and oar.
When the sun shines
it says Love is brave.
We go and lie down
in our rooms
while calculating
the price of a bed.
Whose cries climb
the walls, dark-green
and braided with ivy?
From the bottom of the well,
a circle rimmed with light
is electric. Carve a number
with a side of chalk.
Tap out a message to that
prisoner our living
would most like
to survive.
In response to Via Negativa: Among the believers.
On the contrary, you must
take it all in—
all the symptomatic
tremors that push the needle
on the dial past the zone
of safety:
that growing trace of yellow
in the water, the graphite cast
left in the wake of coal—
The murmur of voices
grows into a din along the river.
Time is a branch on which
leaves proliferate
supposedly to die
away in winter.
Bodies pack every inch
in major city streets:
and isn’t it better
to suffer together,
instead of apart?
In response to Via Negativa: Observer.