Barbara Jane Reyes

With razorblade eyes                       The Filipina is most sincere With too much water And will make a very good wife. With animal teeth                            The Filipina is a loyal partner, We sometimes kill Deserving of all your love. With splintered hands                    The Filipina is the total package, With too much life Much more than meets the eye. With ribcage unlocked                   The Filipina is not for you, We wither your roots If  you cannot handle her claws.

Bubblegum lip gloss kissed,                Our lifelines, our mirrors, I was never a singkil princess            These are Luminous Mysteries — Knuckle cracking, polished toes,        Our notebooks, our language, I was never a Santacruzan queen      To witness, to make way, Black eyeliner, push up bra                  Our thirst and our wedding bands — I was never a curtsying debutante    To fill stone jars with water, to wed, Loud, gum-smacking babygirl             Our glamour and our armor. I was never a tiaraed Miss Fil Am     To transfigure, dazzling as the sun.

she wasn’t born in this city. she found its basalt greenstone chunks, seafloor forced skyward. it found her hands through mist and odors whirring pigeons’ clubfeet fluttering, toothless men’s paper sacks spilling elixirs, roots, shark fin tonics. heat swelling sewer steam rising, side street chess match maneuvers mystifying. it sought her whirlwind hair, grown seavine thick. songbird, adrift, nestling neon, she crafted snares for moths, butterflies, treasure hunting children tracing ideographs: sky, sun. patina spires, smirking dragon boys humming silk lanterns, flight of phoenixes through fish vendors’ stalls, corrugated plastic blackbird perches, jade-ringed gardens, needle-tipped shanties. it bulleted trees, lighting hash pipes; herbalists’ storefront canopies concealing leathered men, versed in languages of whiskered ghosts. it invented her dialect carving tongue: salt fables, yellow caution tape palaces. she lost herself in this city. it lured her, drank her air; honey voice’s precision, hybrid beyond memory. songbird, adrift, this city’s misplaced siren. migration patterns subterranean streams swallowed whole.

Praise the monstrous body, too enormous to describe. When the tongue is taken, how may the mouth even try. Praise the bitch slapped face, the hemorrhaged eyes. The cluster. The clot. We thin our blood, we run. We run, and we always look back. Praise the trafficked body, the one that is excised. On smartphones, with hashtags, we lament the phantom part. Praise the foreign object rushing to the heart. That is you, the help, the heroine. We pump our fists for you,isang bagsak! Praise the ever-present lens, the firing squad shoots every curse and plea. Your breath is a miracle, a lifeline, a headline. The old you is dead. Praise for her soul. We offer to her our last Lacrimosa. Praise the new you, the chrysalis, the secluded saint. Praise you. May you emerge, graced and gospeled. Unjudged, unfallen, and the color of sky.

pilipinas to petatlán she whispers desert trees, thorn-ridged, trickling yellow candles; roots spilling snakes’ blood virgin of ribboned silk; virgin of gold filigree one day’s walk westward, a crucifix of fisherman’s dinghy dimensions washes ashore virgin adorned in robe of shark embryo and coconut husk she fingers mollusks, wraps herself in sea vines virgin of ocean voyage peril she will herself born virgin of mud brick ruins; virgin of sandstorm echoes she is saint of commonplaces; saint of badlands virgin of jade, camphor, porcelain; virgin of barter for ghosts penitents, earthdivers of forgotten names praying skyward virgin of scars blossomed from open veins of fire she slips across the pacific’s rivers of pearldiving children virgin of copper coins she is bloodletting words, painting unlikeness virgin of anachronism children stained with berries and rust, their skeletons bend, arrow-tipped; smoke blurs eyes’ edges virgin of mineral depletion; virgin of mercury at other altitudes she remembers to breathe; a monument scraping cloud virgin of tin deposits extracted from mountains these are not divinations; there is goldleaf about her skin virgin of naming and renaming places in between

you dream in the language of dodging bullets and artillery fire. new, sexy diagnoses have been added to the lexicon on your behalf (“charlie don’t surf,” has also been added to the lexicon on your behalf). in this home that is not our home, we have mutually exiled each other. i walk down your street in the rain, and i do not call you. i walk in the opposite direction of where i know to find you. that we do not speak is louder than bombs. there are times that missing you is a matter of procedure. now is not one of those times. there are times when missing you hurts. so it comes to this, vying for geography. there is a prayer stuck in my throat. douse me in gasoline, my love, and strike a match. let’s see this prayer ignite to high heaven.

there is ghazal swimming inside of her, wanting to be born. on the matter of foretelling, of small miracles, cactus flowers in bloom on this city fire escape, where inside your tongue touches every inch of her skin, where you lay your hand on her belly and sleep. here, she fingers the ornate remains of ancient mosques. here, some mythic angel will rise from the dust of ancestors’ bones. this is where you shall worship, at the intersections of distilled deities and memory’s sharp edges. the country is quite a poetic place; water and rock contain verse and metaphor, even wild grasses reply in rhyme. you are not broken. she knows this having captured a moment of lucidity; summer lightning bugs, sun’s rays in a jelly jar. this is not a love poem, but a cove to escape the flux, however momentary. she is still a child, confabulating the fantastic; please do not erode her wonder for the liquid that is your language. there is thunderstorm in her chest, wanting to burst through her skin. this is neither love poem nor plea. this is not river, nor stone.