I highly recommend the post-colonial and feminist theoretical analysis of the Philippines by Filipino author and feminist critic, Neferti XM. Tadiar called "Fantasy-Production" (2004) and a series of essays and critiques of Hegelian rationalism and Western ideas of Enlightenment called "Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts into Tears" (2008) by Hungarian culture critic and essayist, László F. Földényi.
sans sevieria.
usa.
ebony-nabbed twists of your
praline-sunken hair; sweltered
vanilla, samar sweater. camel wool
and camel cigs. a little jagged—
a little gapas inherent
to your yellow-toothed paradise.
‘kaw an usa ka aragwáy:
love letter to little violences
between heat-torn limbs. you are:
green-boned falconet,
dragonfly-swallower.
ginharokan ko pa ngani
an imo usa ka yukot nga tul-an
ha ilarom han mga bitoon.
appeal of preyed-upon wings
lies on luminous translucence—
on interweaving allowances
for summer fever dreams.
home is not belonging;
it is severing trifasciata
wound from the throats
of grandmother clocks.
duha.
how many tutubi deaths
have you internalized to the
point of shaved brows and
uninhabitable siestas?
you run through the visages
of backwater July ‘til the mylar
forms a worry-line between your eyes.
perhaps we’ll invest in something
that delegitimizes itself
until even the silver lining
fades. but i don’t want it, not when
my shih tzu’s lumot-bones are
beneath the shadowed kangkong that
failed to save him. aniya, “waray
espasyo sa akong adlaw para sa
sumsumang kasingkasing.”
there is no space in my day
for marrow-hearted things.
away!—to your white-toothed exodus;
an uppercut to the mouth.
(no one to wipe the blood off your chest).
tulo.
star-strangled wingbite
‘til the night sky perforates
and breathes through a
clean yet final lung. whistle
through the exit wounds
and listen to the falconet wheeze
through the dragonfly’s eaten
shimmer. pagsisid ko:
i sink into your domestic promise
of tomorrow, dissonance
of grandmother pendulum—
pagsisid ko: i sink into your boneless,
spit-soaked baby mutt, buried
beneath a patch of failed kangkong,
still wagging in some afterdream—
pagsisid ko: i sink into you,
not quite asleep, not yet awake,
half-cradled in the curve
between forgetting and
returning.
you loved long enough
to hear feathers singing
between the cracks; still, you
pressed them down and sent them
to kasisidman’s sunken mouth.
home is never belonging;
it is the aching trifasciata
wound from the throats
of grandmother clocks.
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