Series: Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2015

(Magellan’s Cross and Basilica del Santo Niño, Cebu)

A part for the whole, the whole for the part:
one reason we collect souvenirs, make gifts,
bring proof of states we’ve passed through

and survived. The reason we wrap and tuck
in tissue, fold away in plastic or in chests
with cedar chips before it’s even clear

why, or what it is we’re saving— That day,
for instance, lining up with other pilgrims
at the shrine, a hot wind blowing through

the cupola from the sea; and the native women
clad in broadcloth skirts of brown and yellow
swayed their hips in the sinulog, and chanted

prayers into which they’d braided our names—
safe travels, good health, love, luck, wealth—
the usual pleas the faithful might bring

before any deity. A couple of fifty
peso bills, and they pressed into our hands
a clutch of candles: blue, green, yellow,

some of which we could light and fix
atop the marble base beneath Magellan’s Cross,
the rest to take with us on our return. A plaque

affixed there told me this tindalo wood
that people stroked with reverent fingers
was not the cross itself the explorer planted

on the beach in 1521, perhaps more grateful
for the end of that wretched sea-voyage
than for the complex details of conquest

to follow— but that he did not actually
live to see unfold. The artifact itself lay
inside the wood, as a violin might nestle

darkly in its case, preventing the overzealous
from chipping off pieces, splintery tickets
to the miraculous. A courtyard away,

inside the Basilica, longer lines snaked through
stone-paved hallways for the chance to look
into the glass case holding the image

of the child Jesus: robed in blood-red velvet
and embellished with gold, Magellan’s gift
to Rajah Humabon’s wife after the pair

were baptized and made to pledge allegiance
to the Spanish crown. Four decades and another
expedition later, Miguel López de Legazpi torched

the villages where he claimed the natives
had grown hostile; a soldier supposedly found
the image intact in a charred wooden box,

though fisherfolk were in the habit
of telling other stories— the kinds in which
holy statues abandoned their altars at night

and traveled through the countryside,
dipping bare feet and hems of garments
in the mud to come to the aid of the poor

and ailing. How could transcendence
newly spring in a stricken world where
mystery has been traded for chance,

politicians’ promises, cheap knockoffs?
Awaiting our turn, it was unnerving
to observe so many devotees

rap almost violently with their hands,
with their knuckles, on the glass
that kept the idol in its separate,

airless space— Some sobbed, some wept quietly;
all of them cried Pit Senyor! Pit Senyor!
before dropping a coin into the box.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

He’d stand in the yard, puffing away
at a fat cigar, signet ring with an opal
winking on his pinky finger. The first time

I met my father’s mestizo cousin Frank,
he’d just come from abroad, somewhere warm
like Mexico or Florida. He towered

over us, hair tawny, blood thickened
after all by someone who’d given him
a name to match blue eyes.

And in those days, he had money—
enough to rent a two storey house
they occupied only a few

weeks a year, enough to educate
his brood of seven or was it eight
in schools abroad (not public).

Every summer he asked the same two questions
of me— how old I was, how far along in school.
The answers never seemed to really matter—

he’d launch immediately into a speech about the young,
how in America they raised them to prize this thing
called independence; how, once they turned sixteen,

they’d want to bust out from under your roof
and hit the road, make their way in the world on their
own terms. Nodding his head in my direction, the corners

of his mouth making the shape of either a smile
or a smirk, he’d say to my father: Mark my words, that’s
how they do it. One day that’s what she’ll do to you.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

the phone call comes, the morning’s skin is pierced,
the holiday ruined before it even begins. Suddenly
the months of the years rearrange themselves. Suddenly
routine surrenders and substitutes must be found.
Suddenly you clutch at straws so hard you make each
one another kind of breaking. Suddenly the surf pounds
in your ear and nothing you say or do can console the one
who’s come in, tired from swimming, from walking. Suddenly
it’s evening, filled with the wings of moths that converge
in rooms where we’ve covered the furniture with drop cloths.
Suddenly the night unreels and the halls lead us round
and round these rooms that we thought were locked
but which give at the push of a fingertip. Suddenly a bird
calls out and a mirror drops from its frame. Suddenly
a shadow melts in the shape of a cage and the wall
is lit as if from within. Suddenly it’s raining.
And just like that, suddenly it isn’t.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Who does not love, even a little, the sound
of his own voice? When the browser times out

I must prove my humanity by solving
an equation: 10 + 8 or 2 + 7,

in order to continue reading or making
commentary on the latest drama

that the world’s delivered to our door.
I ponder the question a little more

and realize it isn’t that, really:
not the speaking or the writing

as a one way telephone, but that even
above the canceling din and pummeling

wind and rain, all my histories
might count for something.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In primers, in notebooks, we traced
the shapes of words with No. 2 Mongol

pencils. The heads of lower case letters
touched the broken red stitched in the middle

of each set of dark lines, the upper case
sported little flourishes. Big bosomed B,

puffer fish disguised as D; and my favorite,
the T like a cross between a boat and open

palanquin. In them, I sensed something
could perhaps take shape to lift

across the plain expanse of newsprint;
or break up space briefly, the way

so many separate wings come together
as one wing, as birds wheel and turn

in droves over the hills, on their way
from one place to another.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

In the aftermath, the center of the city
turns into a forbidden sphere.

From the air, thin vapors describe
what once subsisted there.

No one can remember signposts, bouquets,
or where the crosshairs focused.

The sky is a tray of hidden circuits,
tilting as it approaches full capacity.

Somewhere a lever flips and the chrome-
colored marbles begin their trajectory,

passing field after field
of stenciled poppies

then disappearing into funnels
or invisible throats.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

2

A loop of metal
& a clasp at the end
of a chain

Two french wires
& the bones
of miniature chandeliers

Four prongs that seat
a gem of doubtful
pedigree

This window light
is mute to tell
what they cost

but they’re given
now to me— The only
instruction, that I

remember who I am
& that a stone has facets
time whittles constantly

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.