on leaving
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
the river fills with everything I miss –
gem-gem’s prom dress
aunti geline’s flooded living room
my chickens buried in salt
after the last typhoon how dare I call
home what was never really mine?
how dare I miss the sea & not sit
for my mama’s stories?
what has a poem ever done but take
me further away from my family?
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
‘unfit for human consumption’
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
portrait of the author as aswang
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.
