LOLA COQUETA

OLA
LCOQUETA
Isabela Banzon

i
Tue UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES PRESS
DiLiman, Quezon City
 129221
THE UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES PRESS
E. de los Santos St., UP Campus @®
Diliman, Quezon City 1101
Philippines Ps
Tel. (632) 926-6642; (632) 925-3243 999. 2%
Telefax: (632) 928-2558
E-mail: press@up.edu.ph B/ 7
‘Website: press.up.edu.ph L 64 To Caroline, Jonathan, and Siobhan
2009
Copyright © 2009 by Isabela Banzon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored

in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without prior permission of the publisher, l

i The National Library of the Philippines CIP Data

Recommended entry:

Banzon, Isabela, |
Lola coqueta/fsabela Banzon. — Quezon City:
The University of the Philippines Press, c2009.
p; on

1. Philippine poetry {English}. I. Title.

PR9550.6 899.2101 2009 P031000061

ISBN 978-971-542-595-7 (bookpaper)
978-971-542-596-4 (special paper)

Cover illustration: Champaka by Genara Banzon

Cover photo: Julian Banzon
Cover design: June Poticar-Dalisay
Interior design: May Jurilla
Printed in the Philippines by EC-tec Commercial

DLS-CSB LRC
Contents

Lora CoqueTa

Acknowledgements ix
Introduction xi

Seven
Traffic Light
In the Fifties
American Dream, 1960s
Lola Coqueta
Nineteen Years Later
Someone is saying
At the Wake
Done
Ride
Bumbay
Paraiso ng Kabataan across Manila Zoo, 1970s
In Cubao
Ngek
Hoy .
Academic Delirium
Fools
To a Muse
At Starbucks
Oil
DH Sunday, Hong Kong
We're both crazy, so you're not ridiculous
Kids Everywhere and You and Me in Nowhere

vii
 Globalization on a Budget
Rindu 33 Acknowledgements
Robert's Corpses 35
A Friend Falls in Love C37
38
Sms Sestina
39 Some of these poems have previously been published,
I Could Say
41 sometimes in a different form, in Affirming the Filipino, Ani,
Letter to Mr. Thumboo
43 Asiatic (Malaysia), Caracoa, Cha (Hong Kong), Encounters,
Killing Memory
44 One Hundred Love Poems, Philippine Graphic, Quarierly Literary
In Transit
46 Review Singapore (Singapore), Review of Women's Studies,
What will we do with Lily
48 Tenggara (Malaysia), and The Philippines Free Press.
Daybreak
50
Attention
52 Thanks are due to: Gémino Abad, Heidi Abad, Ma. Rhodora
Radio
53 Ancheta, Martin Anderson, Lalaine Aquino, Lydia Arcellana,
Final Approach to Manila
54 Pat Canavan, Maricar Castro, Conchitina Cruz, Jose Jr. and
June Dalisay, the Evangelista sisters, Robert Finlayson, Dennis
Notes
57 Haskell, Judy Ick, May Jurilla, Suchen Christine Lim, Daisy
Lopez, Paolo Manalo, Aileen Salonga, Leo Schmitt, Lily Rose
Tope, Corazon Villareal, and, of course, Charles, Audrey,
Angela and Aidan Mooney, Scott Winch, and Mauricio and
Gabriel Zapiach, who assisted in various ways in the writing
and publishing of these poems.

Special mention is due to: The University of the Philippines

Diliman The Office of the Chancellor and The Office of the
Vice Chancellor for Research and Development for funding
support in publishing this title.

viii
Introduction

Isabela Banzon's Lola Coqueta is a collection of great variety and

resilience—by turns imagistic, reflective, sarcastic, restrained,
and dramatic. While set in a number of locations—travel is
one of its leitmotifs—and presenting a variety of speakers, it
displays an unquestionably Filipino sensibility, Employing
shifts in tones and a variety of diction, the poems present
links between the present and tradition, between the physical
and the metaphysical, from someone whose home is lovingly,
sardonically, Manila. Whether dealing with travel, love,
feminism, globalisation or the great poetic theme of death, Lola
Cogqueta possesses a cultural richness, informed by Filipino,
Spanish, modern American, Indonesian, and Malay values. In
an unforced manner, Banzon’s voice presents a world that is
always at least slightly awry, and the poems meet that world
head on, without flinching, and give expression to the wide
range of emotions the collision inspires.

The variety of tones is easily illustrated. In closely located

poems, “Done” imprints a fierce, feminist protest, with religious
imagery used torepresent oppression pounding in the speaker's
ears like blood. “Ngek” more light-heartedly and with a shrug
of the shoulders points to a sense of plus ca change that occurs
with Philippine elections: the antics of campaigners are entirely
at odds with the voices and values that pervade the collection.
“Academic Delirium,” also playful, demonstrates Banzon's
capacity for satire, its stark juxtapositions possessing a logic
that is revealed only in the final line. Politics is a potentially
serious subject, as is economic circumstance, the subject of

xi
 “Globalization on a Budget,” but it seems very Filipi
no to treat best a kind of wayang kulit because it is conducted over an
tough social situations with a laugh. “Globalization”
provides unbridgeable distance. This is another take on globalisation,
a jokey but serious evocation of life in a cheap hotel. In
its own in a determinedly quiet poem that is quiet because the noise of
way, the poem is actually one of protest, a sign of intelle
ctual longing is only just repressed. Beyond this, the poem suggests
sophistication also apparent in the poem's technique.
Banzon’s that we are, in a sense, puppets of our own emotions. Banzon
play with internal assonance, end thymes, line breaks
and is a poet of internal experience but her stance is humble and
alliteration conveys a wry humour:
exploratory; hers are the poems of an author not in control of
... The precepts experience or expecting to be.
of practical need proclaim: singularity
of bed or bath, or portable peace, cannot be “A Friend Falls in Love” is not a celebration, as its title
might suggest, but a puzzling over the connections, and
had. Public air, disconnections, between language, love, and lust. Love is
stale, recycled, transports the stare... difficult, even if potentially enriching, and ultimately “A
Friend” is a philosophical poem about our urge for completion,
These complexities, even contraries, of feeling our need to become more than ourselves. By contrast, “Sms
also appear in
openly serious poems. “Someone is saying” is simul Sestina” uses a “languageof love,” of a hungering for a loved
taneously
a poem of love and of loss; the self-ironising “We'r one, in sardonic ways. It mocks the whole idea of contemporary
e both
crazy, so you're not ridiculous” (what a title!) is love, or at least of its conduct through modern technology. The
regretful but
barbed; “Letter to Mr. Thumboo,” written in a most common way, and perhaps the most cowardly, to break
student's voice,
jokes about contemporary poetry's relation to conte off relationships today is through text messages. However,
mporary
lives but is also serious about the study as oppos the main imagery here is of food — Asian fast food. The poem
ed to. the
spirit of poetry; “Killing Memory” is one of many presents love, sweet and sour, like an item on life's menu that
poems in
the collection about failed love but is cast you have to try once but which is no more than that. This
as a murderous
melodrama, a telenovella in verse; it is hard
to decide whether is a poem about the food of love that seems to recommend
the alliteratively titled “What will we do with Lily,” fasting.
set within
reach of the “Love and Affection Café,” is jokey
or not.
Banzon’s play with the language of love does not stop there.
Love is one of the book's principal themes and it “In Transit” is a more heartfelt poem that uses the imagery of
is treated in
many ways. In the serious poems, melodrama is train travel to deal with a relationship that has come to “the end
not an option.
“To a Muse” is an intriguing poem that refutes of the line.” Lest all this might imply that Lolz Cogueta is easy
contemporary
temptations to live life vicariously through video and cynical about love, the reader can turn to “I Could Say,”
fantasies,
and refuses any sentimentality about love or an aching expression of love unrealised, and unrealisable, and
inspiration,
“Rindu” is a love lament, about an affair “Attention,” a brief poem that commands us, “Love long, love
that becomes at

xiii
 hard” —whatever the cost, this is the only way to realise
our |} of daughterly love, making him not just Banzon’s father but all
being. This strikes me as a very, and very admirable,
Filipino fathers. The child that Banzon was lives on inside her, and is
stance.
a key part of her aduliness. The imagery of bucket and spade
at the seashore recalls simple childhood pleasures but also
The poems about love suggest the richness of this collec
tion, their fragility, and the inevitability of experience, including
but they are not the whole of it. The opening poem,
“Seven,” that of the ultimate experience: death. In a Catholic country,
describes a child's experience of rising out of the body
but with It is also notable that the poem provides no religious hailings;
a childish perspective—Mars bars on the astral plane!
Is the | It remains stubbornly, courageously, honestly agnostic. We
child foolish or wise? Are Hell and Holy Confession
childish will always in some way be children before cur parents but in
notions? The apparent simplicity of the poem, tellin
g a child's these lines the poet stands with her childhood wishes before
story, is beguiling, but there is more going on
than meets an an awareness that the crossing her father is about to make is
innocent reading. This meshing of ideas of
innocence and an existential one—one in which he will discard her. Even as
experience is characteristic of Banzon’s work.
she knows that her end will be like this too. The poem faces
“In the Fifties” is a clever poem that contrasts Ameri our helplessness, which is shared and yet uniquely individual,
can life without flinching and without escape, but there is no jot of
in a “fancy yard,” which the child Isabela wants
like sugar thetoric or performance in her imagery or phrasing, and the
candy, with an earthy Filipino life of rooster calls
and salted long, quiet lines are beautifully judged. This is surely one of
fish. It is a poem recalling inculcated desire, but
Banzon is the finest elegies written in the Philippines, and the book is
so honest a poet as to reveal that the desire has not
been left worth reading for it alone.
behind; it is evoked readily even now, but is tempe
red by an
adult, postcolonial awareness that generates
a poised tone, Lola Cogqueta is a lively, moving collection that stamps Isabela
simultaneously of interest and irony. Lolz Coquet
a concludes, Banzon as a poet to be noticed, and not just in her home
not just ends, with “Final Approach to Manila,”
which is also country. Technically, she is able to use old imagery—for
poised in tone, held between evocation of the beaut
y of the example, of the moon, swelling outside a window —in new,
(dangerous) landscape ‘below and the urge to
vomit. This is vivid ways, and she makes excellent use of line breaks and
writing of considerable sophistication.
a sense of paradox that is contemporary in outlook and vet
No “Introduction” to the volume can pass witho maintains a traditional sense of human faltibility. Her poems
ut mention are written with a wonderful compassion, and she never raises
of “Nineteen Years Later,” an elegiac incantation,
with large herself above that sense of the unending nature of human
emotions rolling in like a wave whose tide will never
ebb. The desire, which can never be fulfilled but which demands to be
poem evokes a dying father with “your own
end mirrored in pursued in both life and words.
his,” the “you” intensely meaning “I” but spreading
to siblings
and, through the force of the poem, to the reader, even the
reader who has never known him. This is a beauti
ful expression Dennis HaskeLL
The University of Western Australia

xiv XV
Lota CoquETA

De desnuda que estd/ brilla la estrella.

(In nakedness, the brilliance of a star.)
Rusen Dario

+.and the heart doesn't die when one thinks it should.

CzesLaw M1L.osz

El pueblo Filipino no es una nacifon sin esperanza.

(The Filipino people are not a nation without hope.)
RAFAEL PALMA
 Seven

I woke to the whirr of my Daddy's

fan as it lifted me out of my body
that stayed among the pillows somehow
B and wouldn't budge, much as I tried,
* even when I pleaded with my toes
to wriggle or when I stamped my feet
in a huff but they didn't obey. My
body lay limp on the bed and couldn’t
get up and there it sulked until it
no longer mattered, far from the swirl
of cloud and light and nothing else
but calm. Then in my head, I saw “me,”
my only thought, that I was dead,
and I only seven with my Mummy's
secret on the topmost shelf, a Mars bar
hurting my tummy, and sure I was
to burn in Hell. Where could I go for Holy
Confession, but a voice was saying
in my head, “What are you doing so far
from home, it isn't your turn, you have
to go back,” and I was happy to tumble
back into bed, because I was only seven.
 Traffic Light
In the Fifties

At the intersection,
No one seems when Dick and Jane played house
denied of loving. or skip-roped in their fancy yard
Rev up the engine, all day, or simply idled,
Energize, Or on a brand-new bike
Who says red careened downhill and head-on
lights are ‘edged Pepe and Pilar out of
impositions, my grade-school book, I knew
monitors of our sweet goin
g?
1 wanted that life. No more
rooster calls at 5 a.m. to tidy up
the house and rid the yard
of snakes that put a frown
on Mother's lips. No
tlce and salted fish for breakfast,
lunch and even dinner.
I look through the window grille
at Father gone to work.
He's left his homemade radio high up
on the shelf, switched off.

When I grow up I'll get an automobile

to drive around the neighborhood.
Father, Mother, baby and 1
shall smile and wave the way it’s done
In my new schoclbook,
and by our gate my dog Bantay
will wag his tail and bark,
but he too has left his post to Spot.
American Dream, 1960s Lola Coqueta

As soon as the American neighbors left, we were No hay sabado sin sol
como no hay vieja sin amor.
at the pit, inspecting:

Long ago, Cecilia,

We poked at open tins of Spam
the halls of Balanga
and spilled V8s, what was a neat supply
swelled like the moon outside
of Coke and Whitman's mints, There was
your window. Ay, sus,
a drinking glass, a jar
the frog in the dry grass
still full of fruit preserves.
of my throat kept pleading
We tried the bunch
to be freed and it was
of keys on locks, the leather purse
hard not to turn away, just,
for bills. We checked the shoes for size,
and ignore the hot
the clothes, the smell
of washing powder. Saturday dust from your
Lolo’s mahogany
We left untouched the remnant
cane tapping to the croak
of a doctor set, the blonde head
of my sweet kundiman.
of a doll, but saved the line of comic books
Ay, the things you must do
from Marvel and the DC superstars.
to ensure a wedding —
un poco pintura
y polvo, champaka
on the shy skin. It was
on such a night as this
under the gas-fed light
Don Manuel led me
to the courtyard of his
loneliness.
Astage
presentation, hija,
the impresario said.
 Pero, ahora, for
what are those tears? If
8 Nineteen Years Later
Ramoncito could see fim. Jullan Banzon
the distress in your eyes,
he would no longer wait
The adequate words
to wake the maya in die on the way to my mouth,
your song. You must show him
your life is in his hands How may we cite certainties
and you must be grateful less slippery than sand?
Dennis Haske, “Flowers”
to be at his service—
for what is a woman,
2 Nineteen years later, and yet it seems like only yesterday
haber, but nada without
the grip of a man on when the foam
of the sea was in my mouth in that one clear call nine times
her life— por favor,
use your cocote made to nine
brothers and sisters and me like a cat with nine lives to live,
and do not waste on that
poor boy Fidel your through
hell, before the vast tide of silence at the news of his death
undying love,
took over.

Nineteen years and still overcome. On this shore, pail and

shovel in hand,
I find no words to bury that moment, the truth behind
mortality, futility
of further human effort. Over and over I stand beside his bed
as the salt,
turning alkaline, shifts like sand in that body I once knew
was my father.

Convulsions subside, then nothing more. And yet, to stranger

or kin
gathered around the now impossible, how to know when to
let go
 a
i

of the line that connects you to this waste of a man is here, Someone is saying
looks you
in the eye, weighs down on you, your own end mirrored in
his; even as }
To be with you is to go whete the sun is setting.
you look around, asking no one in particular, who will tell
him— i
El sol va declinando,
“it is finished, your life here” —as if he hadn’t known. When someone is saying,
does
one cross the bar of hope to revise what to pray for. No more I hear my name caught in a sudden wind.
the walk out the hospital door into the expanse of sea and
sunshine; 3 Beside me, a typhoon
and yet it is not the monsoon season.
just for the end to come soon, swiftly—and that his pain be
ours to bear. ; I am listening to the crickets somewhere in the trees
He wakes, scans the room briefly, perhaps in search of a and the sun as it sets where you are.
familiar
face anchored in some far zone or of a star assuring him, Cloudless the sky and bright are blooms in May
allowing him like you.
the crossing each must make alone. Dusk in his voice; but
father You would have said it simply.
Happy and sad are we,
to the end, he bids me rest before that slim throat of
recognition Someone is threatening rain.
catches the wind. A sail at last—and I am left a little child one Dark the hills and darker the grass.
sunset 1
by the shore, wishing forever would stay, he in his prime, my | You would have said,
pail | when did it matter, the weather?
and shovel in his han — except
d the tide has risen with the
night. Gone is summer and numbered the seasons.

10 11
 We lie in an open field and the sky y fill fil s up with
i clouds. 3
It is how we knew it would: p - At the Wake

Cruel and kind are clouds.

All passes and all remains. Remember when you taught me
: how to play sungks, moving the shells from
Far away, someone is saying,
hole to hole?
Todo pasa y todo queda. B® Do you understand me now,
the rented flat, boarding house,
bed space beneath the stairs?
: I kept going, ran out of options
"when looking for home.

12 : ; 13
 Done you pledge assistance in my hour of need
as though, in truth,
"you're the Redeemer
and I'm the bride who's subject to husband
You force me to go
for all eternity.
on my knees
while you threaten to walk out of my life.
But what do you know of my need to die at your hands.
I open myself to Christ but that's never enough.
I'm silent as a mannequin in a Nike window.
I confess,
In the pews is the promise of my resurrection,
you're without blame,
a phone call you've chosen to end abruptly.
In your mercy,
The Stations of the Cross is the autopsy report.
you'll bless me with water from yout font
I descend to the dead as surely as Christ bears our griefs,
and we shall go and multiply
The heat’s oppressive like you.
like goats.
And though I'm not worthy, and, Lord,
Let me make public my sin in this healing Mass.
you've not given the word,
You're still the fisher of men
how liberating it is to kill you, that I may live again.
and I'm the felix culpa you couldnt live without,
not until you decided, anyway,
that it’s true,
the devil takes the form of a woman
whose body you couldn't refuse.

So you make sure I don’t ever forget

that always,
the time of year is Lent,
and I'm the torso in the black garbage bag
the sanitation department discovers
in the old confessional.
In the dark,
ask for deliverance
from the guilt that fires up your private hell.
Blood pounds in my ears,
and as sure as there's salvation,
 flyovers
Ride slam
for Paz, with Down's Syndrome against
the guard
rail who
Baby will love you
who could who
love you shall pull
gagged you
and strapped from
to the back the wreck
seat of this and love you
ride
no one
loves you
stuck
in streets
with no
name with
out end
even
if you
jump start
kick
at busy
inter
sections
who would
love you
baby
when
you roar
past looped

16
 Paraiso ng Kabataan
_Bumbay across Manila Zoo, 1970s

and 1 whisper bumbay

You walk down the streets this is a playground
1 look you over
You walk down the streets and abandoned
The children are alarmed
game?
Don't our streets allow a safe but for children
away from you of the dead
Why did they warn us to stay
and girls end
They insisted you stuffed little boys
a did. Auntie did
In burlap bags. Papa and Mam near the city
1 inherited their legacy. police station
turn
I eye your turban, the blood you in siesta
walk the distance
Into money. You turn away and
but not because of you
The police are on the streets where boys push
The game of Jack en Poy resumes. one against
t about all this
These many years I've though the other
ed you
You and the silly story that follow down a long slide
ets
Since first you walked our stre or from a swing
And stayed in quiet dislocation.
falling

a slip of a girl
 Ngek
In Cubao . for Paolo Manalo

Election time again? I'm still reeling

Ukay lang, okay na.
from the last time. When was that, I don’t remember
exactly, but the streamers are back to block
Like you,
the sky, the posters to litter the streets. Now
I settle for discards,
candidates in government who understand human
living off the glory of someone's
rights can call the clean-up-the-city brigade.
yesterday. Who can
But I thought, “rid the country of corruption”
resist the racks
was the slogan of each senator, congressman,
of clothes, of shoes, of bags?
barangay captain. It’s all so confusing or much
Since when did the present matter?
too loud you can’t hear a thing from the speakers
Enough is plenty here; besides, mounted on top of the passenger jeep.
the fun’s in the find.
It wasn't a talk on the national economy
Open the boxes. I lose
you say, I saw on tv but showbiz personalities—1I forget
poise among the new arrival. No,
hand. who—retelling the story of rags to riches
enjoy the old stock that's on sale, first
or “why go into politics” I believe was the topic.
Please, God, I'm too tired to join another EDSA,
and red or yellow — you take sides? —don’t go with my skin
toasted by too much sun on the highway to Pag-asa.

20
 Academic Delirium
‘Hoy
for May J. 129221
The shining principle is to know your company.
Hoy, I'm as An imaginary line joining two stars would be
Pinoy as pivoted around the center of their mass. It is easy
buko pie— to locate them in the summer or autumn sky. In
if you take onset, their states of panic and terror are usually
into account
abrupt and there may be a misperception of
the starch in the environment. They insist they must go to
the copra work. They make a collection of belongings and
mix boiling arrange and rearrange them. This does not explain
on the cooker how to deal with the inarticulate except by
for bulk continuing to talk. It includes saying, “I beg your
pardon” in full, if you had not heard clearly, and
not “Pardon” or “I'm sorry I didn't hear” or just
plain “What?” They cannot perform simple tasks
without getting lost halfway through. The patterns
on the wall and shadows become menacing people.
Consultations are sinister plots. Disorientation
from time and place is present and severe. Ther,
it all gets in a muddle and it starts all over again.

The difficulty is to know where to draw

the line between comment and fanatic bigotry.
Staunch friendships have been formed this way.
Friends are pulsating stars, heaving in and out.
Severe over-activity can be prolonged and
exhausting and could represent a considerable
hazard. When rudeness springs from a desire
to hit back because of a fancied injury, it is a sign
of a lack of poise. Collapsed stars are in an advanced
state of evolution, This is the safe and general rule.

DLS-CSB LRC
 To a Muse
Fools

Robber of cloudless sleep,

No cure for days when
order the moon beyond these windows
outside the sun again is
hold hostage the night entrapped
silly and you a most unruly patient
in thoughts of you.
yelling you want your old life back. Be rude, do not reason with them,
they panic like words that flee the endless
All to keep our love from
junctures of containment and release,
losing out on possibilities.
In your hands, not so much the weapon
Not quite the liniment for fools
but the threat of love, elusive, brief, a leap
intent on putting up a daily show.
across the narrow ledge of my expectancy.
Yield, identify yourself;
Figure out the laughs.
no stolen presence here to hold,
only the waking of time, of place,
The ailing years remain
naming a loss that never was.
recalcitrant, obtuse, and we, still in our
element of acrobatic wit. Just
between us, where's the sunshine?

Out there, you say,

running us into night.

ofl 822-210
 Gil
At Starbucks
after the Exxon Valdez spill, 1989

slicked:
Everyone loves a city. It's
the province has time to spare, to feed on air,
his lies
to seek a mate dump reek
of black
the main intent, endless ways
weed
to spread neighborly lies. Hardly
is it heard
then breed.
the aspiration’s more than emptiness.

Now
This urban landfill may
his seeds
explain WiFi-neat
ooze pus
anxiety, discreet
and only spit
horror at how we live across
slums that sneak behind skyscrapers: out tar and

a hit-and-run, a bank held-up in daylight, feather.

another body found —day

after day, what sights to see. Not so surreptitious His charm
by night, the city makes no demand slews all
protest.
on us: primetime mess
speeds by, a blank that sheds no light
on No-Through-Traffic signs and people.

27
26
DH Sunday, Hong Kong
I'm not ashame to be Pinoy:
my contract's not expire, so pity,
but I want a little to enjoy.
I no stop working but “unggoy”
or “please” they never say to me;
well, m not ashame to be Pinoy.
No play on day-off, no toy
with lift that go updown, no sorry
too but I want a little to enjoy.
1 fix Pinoy foods, hot like batchoy,
very near to Jollibee.
Why I ashame to be Pinoy?
Jewelries, pants, you like, ‘Noy?
Ma’am, you pay? I take your money
‘cause I want a little to enjoy.
I also buy, but cheap only, hoy,
pasalubong for my family.
I'm not ashame to be Pinoy.
I want so little to enjoy.
28
-
We're both crazy, so you're not ridiculous
Noons are like dried fish frying in the flat below.
Love I learned from frying.
Drifting up, vinegar and chili on a woman's lips,
the laundry pile, the smell of sausages.
In the coldness of the kitchen sink, a plea:
the bottoms of the pans are black.
Noon is the kiss of bottled spice sitting it out on a rack alone,
a kiss Miguel did not steal at Bhima’s in Ubud last month.
You blew that kiss.
In the room, the plants potted, in a row, in need of water;
the tv, a cable; the phone, a call.
Your kiss is x x x because you're tall and lean
and away with the aris.
“We're both crazy, so you're not ridiculous,” was all
we could muster as words of endearment.
The stony garuda of happiness, still exquisite,
mute, is poised along the airport road
where the garden of sweet nothings swelters in the heat.
Nothing is forbidden, the sign says.
We flew to cover the distance between us.
In separate time zones we fell.
Poor love. You shatter in the south;
but the noon will pass into night, the frying
cease, and plastic stars out of storage will shimmer again.
29
 Oh, yes, because you have to have her in your arms to know
it's me. Sayang, kasth sayang.
Kids Everywhere and You and Me
The music of the moment sighs to a stop. "in Nowhere
Stuck since noon, the goldfish quivers for you.

Middle of the affair is to be in nowhere.

There are no stops for getting off.

' On the stoplight-yellow couch, your kid,

The apple of your eye, the scent of ripening fruit all over.
Crisp is the air and you, fragrant as the night.
On the video, the fantasy begins.

To be in the middle is the tug of cloud and telephone calls.

The children are on the line.
Mine, south of the city, two in America.
Yours, 15; name's Eva.

You're not a cloud, but the deep-blue midnight sky

Though, of course, I know you're real.
Virgo collides with Aquarius,
Fate the conjunction of our billions of thought moments.

Fighting with your lover and me wishing you well

Were things to do on a starry night.

I ate pizza with big kid, kid 2; too tired, you too
Ate pizza with your kid, but still
The red-hot quadrangle of love competed with the stars.

This December, the monsoon rain’s awry

And storm clouds hover over the bed of parenting.
Your words on mine, mine on yours, blanket our kids
Who are everywhere, while you and me are in nowhere.

30 31
My orphan, we will meet
Face to face, says your seer.
Orchard dreams will bloom again in spring
Which in effect will bear fruit in my summer.
Mimpi indah.
Beautiful dreams.
To be in the arms of lamplight is, simply, emptiness.
Once understood as madness, all is understood.
The middle’s in nowhere.
Globalization on a Budget
* for Lily Rose Tope and Judy Ick
In the corridors of cheap hotels,
blank, barely-there walls. Noise swells
behind each closed door
that it be known: this, the budget crowd. The floor,
vinyl, worn, tells of footsteps
loud as squeaks from luggage wheels. The precepts

of practical need proclaim: singularity

of bed or bath, or portable peace, cannot be

had. Public air,

stale, recycled, transports the stare

beyond the corridor’s end, yet nothing is changed

by suffocation or panic at a world rearranged

by credit cards in the throes of death

or in short supply of cash perpetually. Stealth

combined with strategy is wealth

in bargain deals. And what of health

on a stick or bun, or lived in a noodle cup? Vacancy

is candy at convenience shops. The temerity

of dreams of plush living is to pause

from thinking “the continent itself had come indoors.”

32 33
Out in the sun, the crowd crisscrosses streets
which go their odd way. The clock greets Rindu

acceding: transience is permanent; then lets us assume

everywhere is a little room Last night, when you were missing love
as I was,
where friends agree we were lying on a huge bed,
the world also bustlesin quiet anonymity. each with nobody beside.
I will slip under
your mosquito netting
and you may, if you wish,
find your way
into me.
Aku cinta padamu,
but it is morning
before 1 understand
what you say in the dark.

We can't go on meeting like this,

suspended
on wire, post
to post, through cable, under ocean,
under ground.
Fated to each other
but living without,
we rendezvous in a language not our own.
Aku ingin
mencintaimu dengan sederhana.
I want
to love you simply,
without fear, without metaphor,
but it is difficult
in English.

3M 35
It is difficult to imagine how we are
together,
gecko to the other in the permeable air.
You live in me,
outside me.
Kamu hidup di dalam
dan di luar diriku.
The river rushes below.
What are we in the hands of the dalang,
emotion, our puppet master.
Kita tinda sebelum kita bertemu lagi.
We are shadows in a show not of ourselves.
Who are we
that to leave you in the island of the gods
is difficult.
We do not exist.
Di bahasa Inggris, kita tiada.
Robert's Corpses
Robert tells me
he’s come back from the Bridge Hotel
his mum’s old place, where he dug up corpses
because although he’s moved on
the stench follows him.
It's not like there's blood on his hands
him only twelve when his daddy
walked out and into the Murray River.
His dad kept sliding off the bank, his mum said,
until the weight of two sons she'd left behind
was too heavy even for her.
It’s not like there's blood spilled.
Gran was a dingo and no sort-of brother
could come close to making the point
not that anyone cared
that like in the Meryl Streep movie
dingoes could tear you apart
and the heart breaks in Wagga Wagga.

Robert shows me his blisters,

the body bags he’s been lugging around.
But there's only dust, I say.
I don't buy his story, only a glass of lemonade,
because they now don't get along so well,
he and grog, his baby drink.

36 37
A Friend Falls in Love Sms Sestina

When the dark embrace eludes...

So true to the usual story the stars are salt
you'd think the beautiful, intelligent woman the moon a mockery.
she is wouldn't fall for the predictable line,
the lie often told, so seamlessly— Baby you can throw out our love
and I can sulk
but oh the potency until you say the stars are salt.
of words cuts a figure fine as a man. Why should I starve
Perhaps this is faith, our likeness to God not undone myself of your sms.
by suspicion or boredom with ourselves. Surely 1 shall make myself sick or go crazy.

there's more to this body, skin on skin, The crazy

the his into hers, fair acknowledgement candlelight blinks. Love
of love. Not lust, he insists. What's meant comes like an sms:
by the negative is confirmation: quick, stir-fried. Words sulk.
Their meanings you starve.
urgencies to dispense with the physical, Why put salt
transcendence in a kiss. Always
we aspire for completion, in pairs, on the cut in my heart. Salt
as woman tc man, human to divine—all of the sea, I was crazy
for you, but now I shall starve
truth, found in seeking. our sweet-sour love,
In a world unfazed May the last ball of shrimp sulk
where fear of connection is easily denied, on the plate. Your sms
love isn't part of his telling.
I keep. I should sms
them back to you. No salt
or msg there, even if the stars sulk,
the moon mocks, and I crazy
to keep these mementoes of love.
1 shall sit at the table, starve

38 39
 the night; who cares if I starve
the expanse of your sms?
I'm hungry. But, love,
even if the stars are salt
and refuse to light my crazy
thoughts, I can’t help but sulk.
For does it matter if I sulk
for you and starve?
I'm crazy
not to eat up your sms
where sweetness, salt
could be taken for love.
ir
I don't want to sulk on sms
| for I shall starve the salt
ol out of this crazy love,
40
I Could Say
You have been counting days
dumbly since her departure
but not as dumb as my dumbness
at your departure.
The numbers that correspond
to love's own maths are idiotically rational
more so in love that is unreal.
Much like my attempt to own your lines.
I could say that I am awash
on the seas of your absence
but am on dry ground. How
the waves build, break and collapse
on nothing more than
the thought of you,
whirling within me,
drowning me inside myself.
1 could bend, warp, blur
into days that crowd,
stumble on each other. In perplexity
of love, night moves toward dawn, dawn halts,
night stalls, then all
arch back again.
I could say that neither tide
nor climate nor sense can to the unknown
that is the heart's grief assign
finiteness of meaning,
or I could say
we are love's collision in that alternative universe
41
where equations collapse
not out of density of affection
but because of you inside my head and in
all the veins of my body
who are with her.
Letter to Mr. Thumboo
129221
Iam curious about the chempaka in your poem
“Throes.” Is your chempaka my champaka? I
refer to the glossary for clarification: “frangipani
usually found in graveyards.” Flowers for the dead.
I read your poem over to get it right: her “last
look, that silent cry/ Stays in the sap of my daily eye.”
It is my mother, not your mother, who by “the fall
of hair,” “the quick scratch of hair-pin,” is about
to leave me. What remains of her is a photograph
above the casket—a woman in bloom and the scent
of champaka held by a pin to her hair. Is this
what you meant by the “chempaka scent be ours alone?”
Where I come from, the champaka is like
the ilang-ilang, the frangipani is the calachuchi;
but I suppose, they aren't important, these
distinctions. Violets, roses, any flower will do—
for in whatever language, flowers “give the leveling
sun more dew,” tell of a loss, our life passing.
DLS-CSB LRC
 Killing Memory if, truly,
"a heart were beating there.
But that's not what I came for.
I want you to finish what you started.
Three months ago, I thought I would die
It's a simple enough request.
when you pulled the rabbit trick on me.
Be quick.
Poof, just like that.
Hand me the rat poison.
You made me disappear from your life.
Even now, my face contorts like a clowns
I'could have done the same,
and I choke on your name
reasoned you out of existence,
as 1 would
but I've decided,
with my body convulsing against yours.
Iwill love you to death, instead.
It's not a pretty sight,
but you'll be rid of my misery, finally.
I've taken the midnight flight, so you'll be
asleep
by the time I get to your place.
Your bed’s empty, and I've to change plans
I'see, you've been busy,
on the spot.
all of nine floors to your balcony
I hadn't prepared for you,
and the sliding glass door deadlocked
alone on the beach
from the inside. in t-shirt and jeans only.
You should be proud of me. The moon is sliding down the horizon
I'm now an expert and I'm afraid to look into your eyes.
at climbing walls and picking locks, They've a habit of turning indigo
not wasting away like the sea.
like the cactus in your living room,
1 feel I'm walking on a tightrope
You forgot to switch off the tv,
and not the sand that keeps sinking my resolve.
but it doesn't matter,
But you're not fooling me.
Reruns have kept me alive
I promise, you won't caich me
long enough to choose my weapon.
off-guard again.
I've gone over the details more times than I
care After tonight, when I'm through acting out
to remember,
little scenes and conversations in
Blood on the wall, your body
my head until nothing remains but
on the bed, my note on the night table,
your absence,
I'didn’t mean to slice you open, only to see
for myself I'm back to square one.

294 829-840
 In Transit
Today like the last three months,
T'take the train with you.
It speeds up and I dangle like
the loops above your head,
thousands of kilometers away.
T hold on to the metal rail
as tightly as I have your love,
have saved a place for you
in this phone I carry wherever
I go. I suffer your words
that keep lurching toward stops
I cannot understand.
Today I am underground,
stalled in the thought that
only you matter,
you who've decided to get back on track,
your fear of connections and mix-ups
a commuter’s read only.
There is no screech of brakes
when you reach your stop, no rush in geting
off. Above ground,
the eucalyptus meets you,
Like you, I will have to turn around,
and as day slackens inte night,
hold off the last train home.

Today a delay
and on the platform, a blank wall,
If you had said:
this is the end of the line,
I could have taken it.
I could have taken you running to catch
the next train, but you did not.
The first time we talked
my words stuck in my throat
like a turnstile that would not turn,
held in the grip of your voice on the bar
that had let no one through.
You jumped over the barrier
that had kept us strangers. Love
was a closed route we had forced open.
We laid down tracks as we went
along and the city, bright
and upright, hurtled past us.
 What will we do with Lily
Virtual kisses are like spring in the air.
If they were real I'd feel them. -
Rice, chicken curry, greens and tofu
and Louis Armstrong playing our song,
There's no way but up at the Love and Affection Café.
what we do in bed is not our line of expertise
but if they were real, our kisses,
the rest would be history.
It lifts the spirits, the whiffs of jasmine,
but you can’t say you've noticed much effect.
I'd feel them if they were real.
As for Lily, I've no suggestions.

All those tall buildings and teeming streets

and the Holiday Inn at the center of town,
a history of orgies published in the year of your birth,

but what will we do with Lily?

X means kiss, secret is rahasia,

entah, I don't know, mungkin, maybe
and you on the ferry heading back to the office,

Maybe later, you can be named.

There are several words for if:

kalau, jika, jikalau, apakah. If
the gods are smiling, may it be so.

Cinta is to love, pencinta, a lover.

What will we do with Lily?

We'd both rather have each other for lunch.

Most use kalau for if.

For instance,

49
 Daybreak although the beacon on the tower glows no more,
still the planes will safely land.

Not yet, Rizal, not yet, A door slams. The engine starts.
RAPAEL Zyruera v Da Costa, “Like
the Molave”
Harsh the call of morning light.

Beginnings are the traffic building up at dawn

.
Funny but it's you and me.
In the distance, the billboard lights insul
t the stars;
they fade into the rush, indignant.

The night is ruffled in my coffee cup.

It's almost day.

A dip into a pool of thoughts was when

we met.
The night air locked above the trees,
To begin is not to know where it began.

The lights mutate from artifice to rea]

not because you were smart or there were
lots of people
but you were wearing black.
No, I didn’t tell you that, I said,
the sky is turning pink and blue

and you had hands that could unsettle.

All around are windows yet the dark had

mine alone,
Strange, the wanderings of night.

Your thoughts, asleep or getting out of bed,

have not caught up with mine. Already
I'm dressed.
But, sunshine, when they do, if they do,

51

ET et
Attention Radio

Attention, please, There was once a man

Nothing here to who sang all the love songs
do but smile. I had forgotten and sad
Resist the urge to and happy I couldn't make up
exit from the plane my mind I fell in love
while in the air. with him under the cover
Love long, love hard. of a midnight sky.
Impossible then to fall
midflight. Next day
at the hotel lobby
I listened to the voices. Was that him
humming to himself
or laughing with a guest
or letting go
like the couple at the exit?

Love, no matter who you are,

your tenderness was my home
in many cities dulled
by the cold,
and when at the front desk
I ask for the key,
my song is still for you.

53
 Final Approach to Manila
Oh, where's the cabin crew? My vertigo
cliffs into vomit at
such certainty upon landing as
The plane bubbles over the blue of the to keep me fastened to the seat
sun-bright South China Sea lilting toward white out of reality’s reach—! even as
intensities of the Luzon coast, clumps the plane's wings dip, its flaps open
of hills,
a river’s sparkle, checkered fields, over rust, grass, blue pools, crossed wires
before ghost vegetation, hardened, and the old highway —
gnarled by lava flow, sprouts into view.
Someone volunteers; Mount Pinatubo then the impact of tires.
below;
ail dense tropical forest;
the last eruption, 1991; altered
lives worldwide; sulfur dioxide and rain,
natural mix effecting,
I'd heard, further ozone depletion, and
who'd have thought, Mississippi inundated
and drought in Africa —facts
thrusting at me like they were news
and I'd start like a tourist
at the wonder of it all. The current issue
is
fixed on food.

Windows distract like questions on the state

of the nation or the peso
harangued without end. “Unaffordable,
all illness,” a vitamin advertisement
announces
in jest.
“Try employment overseas; emigrate,”
a columnist’s advice; and a guide in
five pages to shopping solutions.

54
55
Notes

1 “Inthe Fifties,” page 5

“Bantay” means ‘a guard’ or ‘to guard,” and, of course, Pepe and
Pilar’s dog.

2 “Lola Coqueta,” pages 7-8

“Lola” means ‘grandmother; “lolo,” ‘grandfather.’
“No hay sabado sin so] como no hay vieja sin amor” means, in
Spanish, ‘No Saturday without its sun, no old woman without
love.’
“Kundiman” is a traditional love song.
“Un poco pintura/ y polvo” means, in Spanish, ‘a little paint and
powder;’ the correct usage is “un poco de pintura y un poco de
polvo.
“Champaka” is a pungent flower native to South Asia but also
found in Southeast Asia. ’
“Pero, ahora” means, in Spanish, ‘but, now.’
“Maya” is a small brown bird, formerly the national bird of the
Philippines.
“Haber” means, in Spanish, ‘to have’ but the correct usage is ‘ja
ver!’ or ‘let's see.’
“Cocote” is ‘cogote’ in Spanish, and refers to reason or common
sense.

3 “Someone is saying,” page 11

“B] sol va declinando” comes from “A orillas del Duero” and
- “Todo pasa y todo queda” from a poem of the same title, both by
Antonio Machado.

57
 “Bumbay,” page 18 “Academic Delirium,” page 23
. “"Bumbay” is ‘the man from Bombay” althou The poem is an exercise in cutting and pasting phrases and
gh he might come
from elsewhere in South Asia. A fixture in sentences from Space. The Architecture of the Universe (Dell,
Philippine streets,
he was a peddler of goods but now is the chief ' 1962) by Gottfried Honegger and Peter van de Camp, Etiquette
moneylender
outside the banking system,-He is more famous as (Oldbourne Book Co, 1963) by Bernice Smith, and Lecture Notes
a bogeyman,
rumored to prowl the streets in search of the on Psychiatry 7* Edition (Oxford, 1989) by James Willis and J.A.
disobedient child
whose blood and, sometimes, gtinded bones, he Marks.
would turn into
morey.

10 “DH Sunday, Hong Kong,” page 28

“Paraiso ng Kabataan across Manila Zoo, 1970s,” “DH” is the acronym for “domestic helper.”
page 19
“Paraiso ng Kabataan” means ‘children’s paradise.’ “Batchoy” is a beef soup.
“In Cubao,” page 20 “Jollibee” is a local hamburger chain with branches overseas like
Hong Kong.
“Ukay” means ‘to rummage,” and the local Salvat
ion Army or “Pasalubong” are gifts, usually from an out-of-town trip.
Goodwill stores, and “lang” means ‘only’ or
‘merely’; so the
expression “ukay lang, okay na” is roughly,
‘Merely to rummage
is good enough.’
11 “We're both crazy, so you're not ridiculous,” pages 29-30
“Sayang, kasih sayang,” is an endearment loosely meaning My
“Ngek,” page 21 love’ in Bahasa. “Sayang” is also an expression of regret, like
“Ngek” is an expression of dismay and/or disbelief, “What a pity/waste.”
“EDSA” is the acronym for Epifanio de los
Santos Avenue, Metro
Manila’s main highway and the site of the 1986
popular revolt 12 “Kids Everywhere and You and Me in Nowhere,”
that ousted President Marcos from power.
pages 31-32
“Pag-asa” means ‘hope,’ and is the name of a
district of Quezon “Mimpi indah” is, in Bahasa, the expression ‘Sweet dreams’
City. although it means ‘beautiful dreams’ literally.

“Hoy,” page 22 “Rindu,” pages 35-36

13
“Hoy” is an expression like “hey.” “Rindu” means ‘longing’ in Bahasa.
“Pinoy” is short for “Filipino.” "Aku cinta padamu” is ‘I love you’ in Bahasa.
“Buko” is ‘a young coconut.’ “Aku ingin mencintaimu dengan sederhana” comes from “Aku
ingin” (I want) by Sapardi Djoko Damon, translated by Harry

58 59
rt

Aveling as “I want to love you simply” and “(Kamu) hidup di

dalam dan di luar diriku” comes from “Enkan angin” (You are
"the wind) by Sitok Srengenge, translated by Harry Aveling as
“You live in me and around me,” in Secrets Need Words (Ohio U,
2001).
“Di bahasa Inggris, kita tiada” means, in Bahasa, ‘In English, we
do not exist.

14 “What will we do with Lily,” pages 48-49

Words in Bahasa are preceded or followed by their English Isabela Banzon was born in Manila, grew up in the university
town of Los Bafios in Laguna, and has lived in Quezon City
translation.

since 1971. She teaches creative writing and literature at the

University of the Philippines. She has read her poems in
countries including Indonesia, Singapore, and Spain.

60