Tag: Poetry

Biscocho

twice baked Spanish bread

twice sweetened twice buttered up

twice removed from history’s gaze

twice baked Iloilo province bread hard as steel

twice baked Balikbayan biscotti brittle as dried mub

twice used to sweeten morning’s black coffee stained tired goodbyes

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Setting the Price

Please sit down to fill your form
and try to be precise.
I know you just started today
but we must set the price.

Section one determines the base
we need your ancestry
mother, father, grandma and
all the way down the tree.

Don’t skip your gender or your name
Do you plan to change them?
You don’t know? Well, that’s okay.
You can modify them.

Examine sections three to five
Are there any questions?
What is a job? A spouse? A child?
Here are a few suggestions:

Go for healthy decisions first.
Avoid all addictions.
Go to college, get a job, and
avoid causing friction.

If that sounds boring, don’t dispair
we have many options
choose to follow a dream or wish
but do so with caution.

What you decide will cause a stir
even some fluctuation
depending on factors, stocks, bonds,
even the ruling nations.

So much data goes into how
we determine the cost
before sending you on you way
into a lifetime of loss.

Sweet

My addiction to sweetness is killing
my body’s ability to produce
glucose regulating bland insulin.
Simultaneously, my need to know
what our politician are doing to
our air, our land, our water, our planet
is killing my ability to taste
the sweetness in a smile, in a laugh in
a clear sunny day, so I drown myself
in vapid suga.

A Clockwork of Stars

Nuclear fusion fueled
by hydrogen found
inside human spit

carbon cycles through
sweet spruce and pulsating hearts
shining stars and suns

celestial graveyards
rich in nitrogen give birth
to fields of poppies

stellar explosions
produced the oxygen found
in a child’s nose bleed

salty sodium
marks the ticking solar time
piece high above us

magnesium is
maintaining immune systems
of neon fusion

jagged formations
of pearly phosphorus shine
in a toothy grin

rotten eggs protein
fibers synthesized inside
sulfur nebulae

swimming in chlorine
rich star clouds breaking down our
bodily tissues

water is kept in
balance by potassium
flaring starlight cells

calcium remains
from ancient suns and planets
lives on in our bones

this humanity
floating through space time listens
to chemical gears
waiting for clock
to strike at midnight

Names

<Redacted> came from your grandfather on your father’s side, who got it from his father, who got it from his father, who got it from an English man who had no business buying slaves

The doctors were Roses. The nurses were Roses. My best friend was Rose. She took me to the hospital where there were Roses everywhere. I was being surrounded by Roses.

<Redacted> came from your grandfather on your mother’s side, who got it from his father, who got it from his father, who got it from a Spanish man who had no business being in Manila

Theresa came from a Saint, came from your aunt, my youngest sister, came from the feminine version of your father, came from the wishes I had for you, came from the dreams I had for you

Puto

Be me. Brown kid called Black or Black called brown, growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Be me. Eating Puto.

What did you say?

Puto. I said I am eating Puto.

Be me. Answering the question of “what is that?” to a light-skin Latino boy from Hercules, CA. Be me, trying to understand why he and his friends are suddenly laughing and glaring at me like I said the worst word in the history of lingua. Be me eating puto as my afternoon snack.

What did you just call me?

Jose, I didn’t call you anything. You asked me what I was eating and I said…

You’re eating puto!

Be me. 11-year-old. Trying to understand the difference between a slur and my desert. The sweetness of a rice cake and the bitterness of being hated. Be me, a young queer
Black Pinoy eating puto.