What the pale men did not tell the elders is that they forbade their women from stepping outdoors lest the sun darken them. The pale men forced their women’s once bare feet into narrow, pinching shoes, shut their women inside exquisite whalebone cages, which broke the wives’ ribs, and which did not allow them to draw air. Faint, the wives could no longer sing. They lost their ability to speak. Those wives who were still able to utter few words the pale men beat properly, as their fathers and mothers had taught them, as they would teach their sons and daughters. The wives learned silence was their only shield. When our young storyteller arrived with her father’s ashes at Dagat, she begged the wives to return with her, but they claimed they did not recognize her, and so she returned to Bundok alone.

TOCAYA

TOCAYA

Madre, ¿por qué cuando se corre una estrella o luce un relámpago se dice:

Santa Bárbara bendita,
que en el cielo estás escrita
con papel y agua bendita?

—Federico García Lorca, La Casa de Bernarda Alba

Patron saint of lightning bolts

you, of sharpened tongue,

maiden of thunder and war,

guard us against malediction.

Beautiful girl, seer, mártir,

poeta, rebel, tattooed daughter.

Our lady of gunpowder,

our lady of bullets,

our lady of men deep in the earth.

Sweet anise star, bold pomegranate,

saint of machete, two spirit bull.

ASWANG

ASWANG

I am the dark-hued bitch; see how wide my maw, my bloodmoon eyes,
And by daylight, see the tangles and knots of my riverine hair.
I am the bad daughter, the freedom fighter, the shaper of death masks.
I am the snake, I am the crone; I am caretaker of these ancient trees.
I am the winged tik-tik, tik-tik, tik-tik, tik-tik; I am close,
And from under the floorboards, the grunting black pig,
Cool in the dirt, mushrooms between my toes, I wait.
I am the encroaching wilderness, the bowels of these mountains.
I am the opposite of your blessed womb; I am your inverted mirror.
Guard your unborn children, burn me with your seed and salt,
Upend me, bend my body, cleave me beyond function. Blame me.

NOTES

NOTES

“The Bamboo’s Insomnia” was written after Eduardo Galeano’s “Night/1,” from Book of Embraces (Norton).

“Manila Mango” was written after Susanna Kittredge’s “Sequitur.”

“Upland Dance” was written after the Ifugao Music and Dance Ensemble of Banaue San Francisco performance, September 2007. The words ima, pagay, billít, and angin are Ilocano words meaning “hand,” “rice plant,” “bird,” and “wind.” Kastoy means “like this.”

“Duyong 1” uses “salvaged” in the term’s Philippine context. Poet and journalist Jose F. Lacaba writes, “As used in the Philippines, the verb ‘salvage’ and the noun ‘salvaging’ are the slang equivalents of the terms ‘to execute extrajudicially, to assassinate’ and ‘extrajudicial execution,’ terms used by human-rights organizations such as Amnesty International.”