When I was distant, a foreigner
in a country I dared to call my own,
I was a stranger, tempered by the wind,
steered where the rains called me
but it was always the sea that beckoned.
There are no great metaphors for reversal. / Perhaps the process of drying plums / day-old tinapa fsh in baskets / shrivelling into themselves / already frightened of exposure / of appointment and disappointment.
You can turn any word
into a reprimand. You com-
-mand, -plicate, -e, sitting down.
You speak in a world of no error,
one hand near your slip of tongue,
the other seizing the steak knife.
Words, you eat until gone.
America the beautiful, as we were,
nothing spoiled that vision, nothing
convinced me I wasnβt there,
and yet the shadows the water
cast beneath the cavern of rocks
helped me remember the fear I had disguised
Today was a day for stories.
We were on the grass collecting
our trash and we floated on
airs of small talk compounded by
memory seeping out like flotsam.
but you might as well be dead
by the time the first avowal is made.
Langit at lupa. Heaven, earth. Tubig at langis. Water, oil.
Anak at apo. Child, grandchild. Alab at abΓ³. Fire, ash.
This is the afermath when your heart is a volcano.
memories of balasiw: low bamboo beds,
dried fish for breakfast, then chatter,
a roasted chicken for lunch,
a long unwinding siesta,
then dinner, pickings from the farm.
laying down i would count the leaves
above my head, dreaming
of winter, my father was alive then,
so we hush hush,
like the breeze through the grass,
comforting ourselves through tales
in which we are the ambiguous and confused
heroes of our generation.
Thereβs nothing heroic about what you call maturing, / its simple truth, the inward turn, the change of color / on a once-green leafβdecaying then falling.
I will always out talk you
and you will smile sofly
like a lover steeling the self
for a particular cruelty:
the sting, here at the shore,
waves hurtling sea-spray
towards where Iβm standing
I am an archipelago and you / are a continent. I am a negative, a minus, a diference. To your positive, to your / addition, to what you are molding this country into. I am just baggage.
When I was distant, a foreigner
in a country I dared to call my own,
I was a stranger, tempered by the wind,
steered where the rains called me
but it was always the sea that beckoned.