My Cousin’s Wake
We step out of the car, and her son grins, says,
wala na ang mama ko The stillness is deafening
There is only so much you can love because loving something
means giving a part of yourself to it
All bone and hands and heaving and heaving
The lamay fills the tiny shantytown courtyard
There is a grief to this, too Her family couldn’t afford to buy
a church But I know they’re trying — there are flowers,
and the ribboned kabaong, and the candles,
their little lights like love left in the backdoor, running its
palms across the screen mesh, begging to be let in
The doctor said her body couldn’t take it anymore
the deficiency the drugs the drying dusk
I think of my grandmother and her voice like honey in ginger tea
All warmth and want and whisper
Stay stay stay The men are playing cards again
and we do the best we can I wish my cousin got to see the orchids
fill the garden again, like parchment swallowed whole by
blots of violet ink The summer eats itself away and I think about how
believing in something means hoping it won’t be gone
by morning This is the reason we wait for old love
At my aunt’s house, we lie curled on the floor
It is dark, but not suffocating We even laugh,
like ice on velvet I hear my sister breathing and watch her
breath form in that muddy blackness: warm, alive
Tagalog translation:
Wala na ang mama ko — my mother is gone
Lamay — funeral wake
Kabaong — casket
My Journalism Professor Says The Two Things People Care Most About Are Fear And Sex
And I think about that time you dove off
The pier where my people used to shoot down
Planes from the sky; your arms bereft of flight
Like the gorgeous pigeons my lola once watched bleed
To death from the clothesline. There is nothing left
But empty artillery and teeth that grew from everything
We once held dear. My older sister lost her
Virginity in the back of a dormitory in Beijing.
When she gathered the guts to return home, we
Found her mottled with bite marks, each one spelling
Out the name of God. I loved you this way too,
With your hands circling my face and your broken
Mitsubishi Adventure. Just as the Israelites were
Exiled to wilderness, so am I from my mother’s
House. This terror is the only reason we’ve learned
To survive. But even my sister knows that surviving
Is not the same thing as living. Yesterday in class,
We listened to two black holes collide. What do
You need interferometry for? Place your ear against my
Chest. Tell me you don’t hear the world ending.
Narisma is a writer and artist from the Philippines. His work has appeared in Body Without Organs, Atticus Review, and Oyster River Pages, among others. He is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Find him on Instagram at _narisma_.