Note: Every time I read this poem, I am compelled to add new names to the footnote at the end. I hope one day to write poems in a world where grief is a relic, where we can build monuments to the dead without leaving space for future martyrs.
Mabuhay, ghost!
on sabbath day noon i went into a staggering courtyard felt
the bells of trinite earrings past/pass me by,
the birds of Balangiga.
the neon nuke our parents built made a big Pacific crater
i sat with Death in it (we were wearing bikinis) She said it’s too hot
for a hot tub, like we were in a rooftop jacuzzi swimming
and bubbling with air.
did you hear in that water the gurgling throatchimes of your
self which is not a self, your bodynotbody
windshot and gunswept, run afoul of
shore and run aground of evil men —
did you hear them?
Mabuhay, ghost!
at two minutes before midnight on the doomsday
clock let’s meet at the park bench under
the willow weeping for Billie Holiday.
on my way to you a curled-up housebroken cornstalk
will strangle me around the throat — an act of
war — you’ll cry in the streets with an upright banner
shouting Hustisya! the whole thing passing through your spectral hands.
what is it that i meant to tell you? what smokestack
lightning would we have pressed palm-to-palm
like lovers under that willow? were we once bodies? did we
not have hands to write letters to our own mothers
who most likely did not receive them?
Mabuhay, ghost!
on feast day noon i held the silent vigil which is
of course loud in its own way (speaking vigilantly
to the unghosting instinct of a browbeaten press)
your name aloud afoul aground:
Kerima!
Zara!
Lorena!
River!*
at the plowing prow of that riverbend liner
i saw the aching marrow of southern bodies
overturned deep in shallow water
as the cruise line undrowned a disappeared thousand.
as the machinic canyonmaker scrapes fruit from labour
wholly and efficiently in lethal-fertile valleys
i shoulderpress plunge into the canefield dirt-earth.
a shovel hits once for twelve bodies and more
salvaged and saved from the spectre who haunts to this day.
Mabuhay, ghost!
i saw you in that world-ending archipelago-alley where two gunmen
shot you at dawn or bombed out your school or bulldozed your house
or rezoned your neighbourhood for nuke-making —
*a short footnote on names: it was indeed true and in fact irrefutable that Kerima Lorena Tariman and Zara Alvarez and Maria Lorena Barros and River Nasino once had hands and once were bodies although River certainly did not write letters to her mother — a political prisoner — as she was three months old when she died after being separated from her mother — who attended her funeral in shackles — salvage bears a unique sense in the Philippines as a euphemism for forced disappearances — other people who had hands and were once bodies and presumably wrote letters to their own mothers include — Fidel Agcaoili — Randy Echanis — Macliing Dulag — Reken Remasog — Jennifer Laude — Liliosa Hilao — Edgar Jopson — Tandang Sora — Juan Escandor — Archimedes Trajano — Bae Merlin Ansabo Celis — Emmanuel Lacaba — Randy Malayao — Amado Khaya Canham Rodriguez — Ricardo Mayumi — Ben Ramos — Rex Fernandez — Ka Oris — Ka Pika — Kian delos Santos — Carl Arnaiz — Reynaldo de Guzman — Chad Booc — Jurain Ngujo — Elgyn Balonga — Robert Aragon — Tirso Añar.
Tonight’s prairie sunset over the Trans-Canada
blockades the freight trucks plying the empty road.
The black snake-eye warps the shifting mud-land
beneath it; smells fear and lurches for parts
snakelike and tar-slurried: lung cancer dancefloor, atom
bomb, corpse of Ferdinand Marcos, deteriorating liver.
Our snake is full. It has eaten all that can be
eaten in the world. It takes aim at the immaterial rest:
The 120th meridian east arcing disconsolately over
the bloated globe from end to end, always itself, wondering
is there not a thing to be seen one degree to the west?
No! Not for our snake, our attic ghost, our albatross.
Black snake wires empire to colony via the Pacific Rim,
near-bioluminescent with its crackling underwater sparks.
Eating. Always hungry, our snake, our Llorona, our amour damné.
Watching. Always watching, our Galil Ace 5.56 mm, our fatherland.
Watch the black snake spread oilspill-like along four cascading
highway tiers from downtown Manila to uptown West Point.
Palm down fingers stretched curling into the ocean; tsunamis
spilling past the webs of our fingers dissolving eating gnashing
Swallowing the world we built and killed and ate
in nine lonely stanzas.
i. Death of X — At Dusk
Yukawa signalled at the watchtower yesterday —
Strike! one brassborn song for your
Late unladen corpse.
Our moon eclipsed twice that night winking
Back and forth like the delicate ankle in our
Argentine tango.
Our stars fell to earth, prostrate, kissed the soil
And our earthworms and ants with mouths
As so many waterfalls.
Our sun broiled the earth open and cracked it
Deeply, subversively, so that your body was
Buried by the sky itself.
ii. Flooding of the Town of X —
Big trout knew it first:
the vengeance of our rivers.
Fish quarrelled in seven tongues
With blacksmiths and soothsayers
Inside the mouths of nuns and priests
Between couch cushions, electric outlets:
salmon at war.
Whales, then, crushed great vehicles
Hauling forests by the log
Slipped into clubs dressed as college kids
Married ten thousand of our men
Here! the wretched augurs cried:
the vengeance of our rivers.
Sea snakes rained down from the sky
In torrents, died inelegant deaths publicly,
Smashed to pieces by eavestroughs
Crosswalks and soon after gunned down
By firing squad, who hoped to keep them
In the sky where they belonged:
executioner-style.
Even the hot cooked-earth marsh which was
Your divan now, your bed, your pillow,
Was filled with it:
the vengeance of our rivers.
iii. Arousal of the Corpse of X —
Uneasy to snap open Pearl-sky
dew Kokytos howl in your throat
Knife-perch your thigh slice through
Father Geiger’s aureole glow
make you alive
iv. Return of X — at Sunrise
Palm breaches the surface of our
Hymn-organ wrist, lifeline first.
Each fingertip haloed for its own
Virtue. Verging on the obscene.
Our cold wristvein spills into our lap
Via this opening, sangserpent.
Rizal’s palm at the stone warmed
By our stars, our moon, our sun.
Kitchenuhmaykoos watches the
Firing squad kill serpents de mer.
Your palm sunskinned by utopian vision
Wincing against hot stone, cold metal.
Some archer you are, turret-perched,
Hailing a military response to the flood.
Your uran-crown rings each brass fingertip
Already-grieving, beatitude-wearied,
Signalling at the watchtower:
Flooding worse by rain
Our sun has left the augurs
Drowned by sky itself