What was it like when the donkey cart bearing the once
powerful to their execution by hanging, by garrote or
beheading, made its way through crowds pelting spit or stones
or eggs which, when they broke open, dripped like viscous
mucus down the once impeccably powdered face of the woman
who scornfully wanted to throw pastry at these peasant
tormentors? I wasn't there, but I remember the EDSA Revolution
of 1986: thousands poured into the streets—nuns and civil
servants, holding hands with activists at the frontline. For days,
my literature teacher made hundreds of sandwiches
to hand out to all, including armed and mute-faced soldiers:
soggy tuna salad on white bread, fakely pink rounds of
salami and cheese sweating in their cellophane wrappers
in the electric heat of that day. While crowds scaled
the palace walls, the dictator and his family scrambled
into helicopters to be airlifted to Hawai'i; exiled.
People poured into their previous fortress, losing
themselves in wardrobes and closets; a horde of bees
stunned inside a forest made of thousands of shoes, hung
with useless tapestries of gossamer and pearl.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
