nameabledays Archive One

From Filipinas, 1847
























I. Beata

1
She woke at four at dawn,
To catch the morning mass.
Devotion was a scapular,
Salvation was a wafer of Host.

She prepared the altar vestments,
Laid them out in the sacristy:
Alb, amice, maniple: uncrease them
For the saintly, sleepy Padre.

For he shouldn’t see her at all,
She’d leave no trace but the scent
Of sandalwood, as he pulled chasuble
Over his head, assisted by altar boy.

2
A breakfast of thick chocolate,
Sipped from small pusuelos,
Ensaimada and sugared margarine,
Extra treat of suman and latik,

Juicy bits about last year’s sagalas,
The latest misadventures of colegialas,
Made her mornings with other manangs
In the kitchen of the convento.

3
Her single life was a blessing
For her nieces and her nephews—
She pinched them now and then
When they were rowdy at catechism.

Her habito of brown, tied at the waist
With yellow cord, was imitative
Of San Jose. Veil pulled low over her face
Made her look like a grieving widow.

4
At Angelus she was back
In the slanting light
Of the side-chapel window.

As the cura sang a requiem
By catafalque and censer smoke,
As the lugubrious agonias rang,

Frightening the bell tower
Sparrows, she faded even more,
Kneeling in her corner pew,

Counting her decades, atoning
For the sins of the world, in a life
Fully in thrall of the Holy.

(September 8, 2006)


II. Lukayo

Censors suspend“i-Witness” for featuring the ‘Lukayo’ women
of Kalayaan, Laguna who perform a nearly 200-year old ritual
that consists of playfully parading and displaying
wooden phalluses during weddings.

from a PCIJ (Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism) report

“Gee, those manangs were cool!”

Teenager


Gee, our foremothers were cool.
They made it fun, they made it easy.
They showed us what you and I have,
Same old thing among birds and bees.

Those were dildos! Those were dildos!
Cried the lawyer from MTRCB;
Forgive them, Father, said the Padre,
For their symbols of immorality.

And our Manangs skipped and hopped
As they’ve always done—when they were
Healing babaylan, voluptuous babayi,
And the sacred could be danced, aiee, aiee!

Those were dildos! Those were dildos!
The outsize dongs could leave the kids confused!
This old tradition should be banned,
The Lukayo are different from you and me!

And our Manangs skipped and hopped
From across the centuries, before
tadek and tarok became the baile,
And the sacred could be danced, aiee, aiee!

Sorry, no excuses, not even a documentary,
You can’t show it on television—
What comes from deep in our soul
Is a threat to public equanimity.

And our Manangs skipped and hopped,
Of life or love they were not scared:
Fertilize, fertilize, aiee, aiee!
The sacred can be danced, aiee, aiee!

(July 31, 2006)


III. Manananggal

No matter her fear of flying,
She left her other half
In the home country:

The feel of the ground
Was what she missed. All is
Numbness below the waist.

How strange that the need
To feed whom she loved
Should sever her from her roots.

O to hear them speak
Mamay… Manang… Her tongue
Longs for familiar words,

Reaches across the wires,
The shoreless ocean
Of this foreign midnight.

O to touch again the sod
With naked sole, she would
Let her hair down, suck entrails!

And even that other half—
Lover of roosters, gin-besotted
Fool—would be easier to love,

And she’d soon give up her wings.

(July 27, 2006)

September 8, 2006