“Balagtasan” & “My Best Friend’s Dream”
(2016) / “pst! (pHILIPPINE STANDARD tIME)” BY THE POETRY IS OUR SECOND LANGUAGE POETS
Balagtasan (Hindi Dapat)
I found home in grooves of paper
Yellowed by beaming sunlight touch
You draw my lines, you map maker
Pen stabs my palm with every clutch
My lullaby language captured
In orthographic uniform
Veins choke on crisp collars rupture
buttons break ribs where two conform
I will paint my words on my wrists
Hide letters below my elbows
Propaganda on fingertips
Blaspheme your maxims from below
Your lips sweat foreign languages
But my cool skin remains pristine
phonetics pander the vanquished
But you stare at class back at me
My Best Friend’s Dream
My best friend is a Filipino chef
When I burrow into her borrowed sweater it smells like bay leaves were buried in its wrinkles
Receipts tucked into its soft pockets
Crinkling like fresh rice paper
But she doesn’t own a restaurant
Her apron smells like beer
Brown, grease stains mapping the corners of its white ocean like unfortunate continents
She switched her sit down and dine dreams for cold sticky bars
And she never told me why
No family reunions crowding around her tables
No suits awarding her golden stars
instead star studded youths spilling out her chairs
piercings snaking up their earlobes
The air thick with swearing and alcohol
But across the bar shrouded in an cavern of licorice colored bottles the ends of her lips like a beckoning finger curled into a smile
and she never told me why
She’d ask me sometimes
to man the soundboard,
Her sweet banana pepper breath on my cheeks
as she leaned in close to hiss the set list over the noise
Perched on my stool
I watched the bands come and go like seasons
their own weathered genres filling the space like passing clouds
and on my centered orbit
dishes flew by us like meteors
and as singers sang milky melodies into our galaxies
I never had the courage to ask her why.
Until one day, as I stacked the cups
a phone call came up
Her voice sanded with sickness relayed
she wouldn’t be coming in today
I feverishly assured her I could take over
Fumbling lumpia rolls between my thumbs handing them to customers in cardboard boxes sheepishly
As the night wore on, her name began to bloom around my cheeks
blushing as customers asked for her,
the emptiness grew all the more difficult to fill
so despite the coconut oil fog
I reached for her sweater and leaned back, smelling vanilla under her hood
out of habit, I slipped my hands into its pockets,
And crushed the receipts on my fingertips
Pulled them from her pockets and wondered why she kept them
I looked more carefully and discovered
Nestled in its wrinkles
drunk scribbles in two words, to lengthy letters addressed to her
seconds later I learned her food hadn’t found residence in magazine gloss,
but made home in her customers’ stories
I learned
How my best friend had healed a hundred break ups pains with halo halo
How she had underage teenagers under her wraps feeding them turon instead of cigarettes
How she had diffused fights with offers of shaved ice ube staining purple bruises on their lips rather than their fists
How bands would always get paid, if not by the organizer then out of her own pockets
I slipped my hands into her pockets
knowing she chose an underground bar when she could have had the sky,
and I didn’t need to ask her why.