after Danez Smith

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I swallow men whole

sweep entire streets into my mouth

pick at the gaps in my teeth with your

buckled houses     I need no church bell

I arrive before your God awakes

sound like     wooden spoons walloping

a child’s cheek     tree splintering in the wind

pus-wound splitting open     my silt hips shake thick

like swamp mud     fracture each makeshift altar

with a lover’s brined bones    pick the metal locks

of your precious gate     like unhinging a finger

I must see all I swallow    so I pluck your chattering

roof open         there you are    come now,

walk out to my wall of water     & drink yourself home

[  ]

I walk out to a wall of water     the silver of waves

hungry to swallow us     like pigs  

nanay sings     you cannot swim from the wind  

galvanized iron will not stop an ocean’s cha-cha

midturn     but you can leave this world in your own

home     so I join her     our rocking chairs swinging

with the mango trees     outside I hear the slow throat

of street cats drowning     the water, a night blue

-head of hair     all of our town, caught in her knots  

o rosary of broken teeth    altar of plants dying

o how the water flies across our houses  

the wind crumpling us to the next barangay

our taped roofs     gone again

our bodies      severed in half  

[  ]

I sever my body in half    

my ribs a galaxy of lifeboats    

send guyabano leaves down the river    

tilt an infant’s nostrils to the sky  

pluck gills into the boy who sells gabi

on the corner     & now he breathes

beneath water too     the boy finds

his favorite ball      wedged beneath a ship      

now dragged onto our sidewalk    its air still full    

the orange sun calms his mother down

from the coconut tree     imagine your missing

are somewhere resting     on the gentle lap

of a wet car’s bones     a barnacled home

a nameless ghost

[  ]

what good is a nameless ghost?  

today I walked out of my house alive    

& saw mountains for the first time

since I was a child      where are the trees?    

where are the houses?      

sometimes the wind is a fist     or

ten toes clawing into a back or

the last grip before a garbled farewell

do you remember what ocean smells like

after a storm? malangsak!     when the sea wades

on our street still     I can’t get the taste

of fish guts & slow mud out my nose

my hands shake the table    

or is this another wave coming?

[  ]

is this another wave coming? the walls shake

& we almost think it’s an earthquake

but then see the men running    

their feet pounding     slipperless & panting

bamboo poles bouncing atop their shoulders    

your aunti screams they’re carrying bodies

we make the sign of the cross to simple tarpaulin

until there are too many legs

dangling like a snapped chicken’s neck      

the cemetery is still flooded      

so we dump our dead in the plaza

a field of children      piled into black-mud holes

almost like craters of a second moon

almost like we were planting them

[  ]

what if we were planted, instead?

what if the mass grave was just a garden

you weren’t afraid to visit     our twisted limbs

a shallow root system emerging through soil    

pick santol from atop our heads    come now    

& count our toes    marking each year you survived the storm    

what if the children swept to sea all learned to swim?    

what if they met an elder in the middle of the ocean    

smoking a pipe made of sugar cane      her wrinkled arms    

a raft to rest on      she whispers tell me your stories

& they speak of waves that touched the sky

before swallowing their families    hush, na.

they float & the elder blesses them in warm rain

a ghost visiting their sleep

[  ]

sometimes I think ghosts visit my sleep

each time it rains     the house smells of rot again

I wake & find my hair salt-wet soaking

my clothes smell of mothballs for weeks  

what good is a death anniversary shared

by your entire family? who will light the candle

when no one is left undrowned? I weep

for my mother & press my ear to water    

instead of an international phone call

there are too many babies beneath this soil

without even a shoebox to hold them

I stare at my hands & see the white eye

of a storm forming      I keep dreaming

I drowned my family

[  ]

write me a poem where your family never drowned

there are no bodies severed in half

your ribs are just your ribs

write me a poem with no ocean

a poem where you name the ghost

there is no wave coming, remember      

there is no ocean the children swim

then walk themselves back ashore     alive

remember, there is no ocean

this time, plant a tree on unbothered soil

this time, there are no bodies to undead    

only a slow-dance waiting

your mama in the kitchen

asking you to take her back to the sea.

‍

Tanuan, Leyte, Philippines

November 8, 2013
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if the winds snatch our closets again

don me in the singing of zinc roofs

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the night howl of stray cats in rain

after typhoon nothing is left unwet

‍

even the church’s cracking roof

coconuts snap open with salt

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cloak me in the remains of my mama’s

dissertation a drowned laptop years of research

‍

swallowed by the flood of her bedroom

make me an altar of the photos

‍

we salvaged from sea its water lines a crown

above my lolo’s wiggling ears

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once – we identified our dead’s bloated bodies

only by the tattered clothing they drowned in

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o skirt of forgotten match sticks

garland of damp bedding –

‍

cloak our arms in moth wings

send down the gowns

‍

worthy of burial

for the unnamed

‍

after Shira Erlichman

I pick the salt from my armpit hairs & hear

lemongrass rooting to my knees in the garden

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the first track bites my neck dark in a dorm room

while her roommate pretends to sleep

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I inherit the hand-me-down clothes of big cousins’ girlfriends

& smell their old tee shirts when no one is watching

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my first track – a self-inflicted hickey

to hairy arms as I practice in the motel hot tub

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I am 19 at the back of a sex shop purchasing my first strap

learning to hold the plastic leather cracking at my hips

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what if the sky is trans      too?

what if each body of water that has found me

is an ancestor who loved the way I do?

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my first gay kiss – a strawberry chapstick

shared with an entire t-ball dugout

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I open my mouth & flying cockroaches

swallow me with the kitchen ceiling

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I hear crying again & my mama reminds me

it’s the wind  I am always leaving somewhere

‍

I return & baby cousins are new people

with tree limbs & boyfriend mouths

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the river fills with everything I miss –

gem-gem’s prom dress

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aunti geline’s flooded living room

my chickens buried in salt

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after the last typhoon      how dare I call

home what was never really mine? 

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how dare I miss the sea & not sit

for my mama’s stories?

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what has a poem ever done but take

me further away from my family?

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what Waray will I remember

if not written into song? I silence

‍

my WhatsApp while waiting at the terminal

I can’t hear under the next wave coming

‍

they buried the rice /  in the middle of night / sacks of spoiled grain / truckloads of expired relief goods / 7,527 food packs / pouring into pit / donated clothes splotched with mold / we heard the digging first / the familiar splash of rain and mud / 284 sacks of rice / the knocking teeth / of canned food clanking / I don’t understand why this is happening / when the vans finally left / aunti sent the children outside / carrying wet rice / stuffed into our t-shirts / 81 packs of noodles / cans of sardines spilling out of pockets / the news says ‘spoilage due to improper handling’ / ‘not fit for human consumption’ / but no one here has eaten in weeks / 95,472 assorted canned goods  / it seems they’d rather fatten the worms / and watch us starve

‍

beneath sun I am daywalker / a neighbor across the rice field / planting gabi & fresh lemon  grass / at night I shapeshift aswang / a violent hen / night dog hanging / in the willow of trees / thin as the bamboo poles’ stalking / breathe beneath the midnight mud / they say I consume babies when I hunger / replace their daughters with sculptures of tree trunks / I smell of new bark / crawling against old skin / raking scars & stretch marks into her flesh / I open my fanged mouth & fall in love with every woman in the village / whose mother’s tongue does not own a name for me / a hill of blue flies crawl across my face / the pisaw spills my thick oiled blood / an offering to a nanay who wishes me quiet / who demands I stay away from her daughter’s bedroom.

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the pig’s blood / boils on tita’s stove

vinegar steams the ceiling wet / with typhoon

I hold the brown / in my mama’s elbows

as we stir the pot / of black intestines

sauce dances & cooks / the American

out of my stomach / until my mouth returns home

‍

cha-cha as we roll / sliced vegetables into

rice paper / tita, teach me how to turn

again? / see how my body dances

with women / how the ocean returns

to my hips / when warm breasts

guide my heavy / tongue

‍

kay nakakatapon ito hira

stay away / from the gays, iday

they are contagious

‍

tonight / I grip lola’s rosary

tight in my palm / let the Tanauan

tsimosas chant bayot / bakla

claim the sour / sweat of my cum

a holy awakening / to a gold-toothed

crucifix / my weeping crescent moon

screams for a past lover’s mouth / until

mama drags my pale / into sea

‍

& the ghosts hold my queer /

while I float in their grave

‍

tonight, we sleep at the cemetery.

bring chicherias, fresh pandesal, and lolo’s Red Horse

beer to the headstones. a ceremony of dancing

with ghosts. of burned wax staining cement coffins.

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we unearth our mouths, our favorite tagalog

love songs be a prayer beneath bintana.

‍

i am the 4 year old child of a white

man’s mouth. walking into my mother’s

ocean for the first time. the sound of

sakayan engines. calloused fishnet hands.

‍

dig my ears into water. mama teaches me to pray

to my ancestors. I list each spirit’s name

I can remember. even tita marie olga. chant,

until the red ants swallow our legs whole.

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