Mighty Quiet

for Ate Susan F. Quimpo (1961-2020)

There is so much to say of this
mighty quiet. Let us begin here
in murk of struggle, a manuscript

is but scraps of notebook paper
smuggled into prison cell, into
forever, wherever there is deep

listening, wherever we are
waist-high in river, wherever a
marxism fumbles out of my

mouth, wherever the river mouths
a psalm, wherever that psalm is
glass bottle, gasoline, cloth, and

flame exploding on government
wall. Gutter stream is context for fish
trapped in net, sugar trapped in blood,

blood and children rushing downstream,
down this very street. This sacrifice: body
of carabao halved, its hooves tender

on asphalt, a weeping, a sobbing, a
yearning—smallest of axes hacking
sky then flesh, hacking flesh then

sky: we wade again in another river.
Wherever we slip on tiny stones,
wherever a small mound is too

steep, wherever our syllabus wages
war against erasure, wherever we
crawl through windpipe of mountain,

hike in a cave of bats, dip in dark water
glorious. You—on a beach elsewhere,
sustained in hymn and footnote

somewhere. Let's steep these
Sagada tea leaves longer than usual.
Let's be an explicit trouble of study,

a specificity of practice, in monkey
dance, biting black and gold tapestry.
Wherever ancestors smell matches,

hear the cool of acoustic, historical
reckoning in expanse of lung. This
loss is but a harvesting of the dreamt,

a vastness of rice terrace—
perspiring shamans, their teeth dark
red with betel nut, humming literatures

for the wild boar departing—meat for
the estranged. There is salt, uncertainty,
and plastic cups of Red Horse. Strum

guitar—this is a mighty quiet for you,
sister of salvaged young, mothering and
mothering many: on a humid evening,

you say my life's work is to write
the story of my mother, the hurt
in an anthem. Wherever there is

so much song, so much promise, so
much to say of this mighty quiet:
this anthem, this anthem, this anthem.

The Pressing Honesty of the Dead

Imagine the pressing honesty of the
dead. Imagine water inside of what
gets remembered, what gets remembered 
inside the pink glow of an uncle's surgery
scar, what scars from capital. This quiet
in excess of crisis: In the backyard, on the
folding table, is a round tupperware
of buko salad. There go langaw langaw
everywhere everywhere. These sort of
things migrate. These sort of things thesis.
These things make mess, an artist's guide—
a queer genealogy that goes and goes.
Yes, this mourning, this mourning is.
There goes auntie protecting the buko
salad with a hospital blue shower cap.