Via Negativa

upsweep, down-
sweep of pinoy appraisal--- 
in elevator, hotel or hospital 

lobby, there's a kind of gaze 
that wants to take stock of 
what's left of the islands  

in me, or more accurately,
how well I've transcended
those origins---

if i'm sleek and taste-
ful, exude the air of 
a sophisticated traveler

who still goes to sunday
mass and makes mano
clicks open her designer

purse for cash to put 
in the collection basket
if I keep a spotless house

with a tapestry of the last
supper above the fireplace
if my daughters have had

their debut with cotillon
or weddings with at least
seven sets of godparents

i confess i don't go 
to those galas and black-
tie affairs where they still

do line dancing
in my office building
there's a manong who drives

into the side entryway 
after 5 to pick up the trash
and change the plastic linings

and in the parking garage
there's a manang who drives
a little golf cart, checking

on whether cars 
have the proper decals 
at the airport they make

my coffee and give me change
they bring the elderly 
passengers their wheelchairs 

at a conference in portland
last month, my poet friend
texted to say there was 

a manong serving home-
cooked dishes from a food truck
on the corner of harvey milk & 3rd

he said he was homesick he 
gave him extra rice extra 
ulam with sabaw

I crossed an ocean too.
     We were not running from bullets.
         We were not important enough
to be political prisoners.
         There was no war, I have
no visible shrapnel scars.
                 Only a recent calamity
that left my whole city in ruins,
that tore my house in two.
     Two weeks after the earth shook 
buildings 
like toy maracas
             father swayed against the door frame
in his faded yellow bathrobe 
as if to say goodbye.
                  In the morning he choked
as mother spooned soft scrambled eggs
into his mouth.
          Then his eyes rolled back in his head
and he stiffened in the chair.
                Can I say we took him
to the hospital if the hospital
was barely standing? I can see
                the shape made by the feather
stroke of blood that issued
from the corner of his mouth.
                The sky lifted with the noise
of rescue helicopters.
We were not on them.
I was not on them.
            I found another way across
the ocean. I took
what was offered and learned
to hide the sounds of hurt
from my ears.        A précis 
reveals the meaning 
      of the original but can it explain its value. 
Years later I can't erase
       the taste of guilt from my tongue, shake
                this habit of always looking back.

   Growing up, I hear whispers
but no one         will tell me to my face
        I never wonder until I'm older why I'm seven 
before I'm taken to church to be baptized 
The house always smells 
              like fried onions and garlic and oil 
and when I come home from school 
there's a plate of rice       with chopped 
hot dog pieces      Mama T and Mommy S put 
in front of me alongside a glass       of Orange 
Fanta       When I don't remember how to spell
remember I cry        all afternoon
        because it made me lose the spelling bee
My prima Jean wants to use       my new set of 64
crayons with a sharpener    built into the box
      When I don't let her she stomps her feet
and hisses      in my face       You're adopted anyway
I'm confused sometimes        about why I must call
my aunt       Mama T and my mother        Mommy S
They love        each other so much one of them
takes her and her whole family to live with us
         because she couldn't bear 
the sight of her           undiapered babies 
crawling on the rude          stone floor of a hut
    When her children grow up they get
the clothes I've outgrown    and I know I shouldn't
           but I feel like I've been displaced
When the other goes back to school
            she decides washing dishes or clothes
will give her hands tremors and that 
                 isn't good for all the writing 
she now has to do            working for a degree
     From one I learn    how to measure the water
           for rice          And from the other
how to make the cursive for capital 
      T and F        One is like a boat
with a fringed canopy            The other
            looks the same only it has
a rudder for steering at one end     I wonder
      can one travel farther    than the other

We were taught the rice
terraces, laid end to end, 
could circle the earth 
several times— 
                  a belt 
of brown and green, a girdle 
festooned with grain— each 
seed  
     the shape of a tear or a drop 
of milk that flowed from the breasts
of a goddess who took pity on our 
hunger.   
        For we are always hungry,
rooting in the dark even in sleep;
and our thirst, long like a river
that snakes 
             through the years
without seeming to find its way
to the source. 

When we come home after the funeral, someone is waiting by the door to wash our hands and dry them with a white cotton cloth.  Salt is sprinkled on our heads and then we go inside to eat the cakes made from black rice and molasses. In another room, someone has started the rosary; I fall asleep to the heavy drone of voices and wake when someone nudges me to come and eat. On the front stoop the men are playing cards. If the spirit wanted to slip back in this would be the time: whoever has been crying is spent and is being fed sweets, or is drunk from many shots of gin. Rain falls and someone takes up a guitar to sing. The widow joins in and cannot go past the refrain. But even the crickets have taken up their nightly place again under the leaves.