five poems
by Erwin Ponce
IN THIS WORLD EVERYONE IS FILIPINO
All at once I got worse at pretending
I know what I’m doing. This was only
at work and outside of work though.
Everything else lost its meaning
and started to mean something else.
I treat pretty people like pretty people
because they are different. It’s not fair
to anyone that I work in a building
with a view of salt water, an island,
and then the mountains. It’s not fair
that the real ocean feels so distant
from everything. Even the shore feels it.
I saw the moon reflected on the still
water of a lake and it meant nothing.
The next thing I knew my father was dead.
Sometimes he looked at me the way a father looks
at his son. I’ve been living with it ever since.
EACH OTHER
Everything keeps happening to me.
There is nothing that will never be.
Always nearer or farther from the sea.
Everything keeps happening to you.
Sometimes there’s nothing you can do.
It happens to other people, too.
Sometimes we like to drink and
keep drinking. Like being part of the land.
Now there is a drink in my hand.
What is it about you and me, always
something like losing the lay
of the land, kind of like the way
the future is never at hand. Before,
it felt like the past was always there.
It always could have been anywhere —
the drizzle or the bright shiny sun,
your hair when I was maybe the one,
having some of it or having none.
Something was happening to you.
There wasn’t anything anyone could do.
Everything was happening to me, too.
Everyone is a relative stranger.
Caricatures of each other.
Each of us always the other.
DEAR NARCISA
I will never stop forgetting you.
We remember how bright you were,
like glass in the sorrow of the sun.
But hope becomes hopelessness.
Then you were moonlight on raindrops.
But now the city was yours, even men
understood and left you alone.
But it’s hard looking for shadows in the night.
Your laughter fades in the alleys.
Your footsteps stain the streets.
Sisa, my love, my stained glass mirror,
my sorrow, my broken compass,
my other darkness, you are here and always missing.
Everything is a waste of something.
THE PULE REVOLT, 1840 & 1841; HERMANO PULE WAS BORN AS APOLINARIO DE LA CRUZ; HE WAS BORN TO SERVE CHRIST; BUT BECAUSE HE WAS BORN AN INDIO HE COULDN’T JOIN THE ORDER OF PREACHERS; HE FOUNDED THE HERMANDAD DE LA ARCH-COFRADIA DEL GLORIOSO SENOR SAN JOSE Y DE LA VIRGEN DEL ROSARIO INSTEAD
I walk through a forest of whispers. The fifteen mysteries. The Dalit. Voices fluttering like
leaves in a breeze. I think of the stillborn, her body tucked inside bamboo. The liquid that seeps
out is almost pure anting-anting. What we sip of it is almost liwanag already. The Spanish sees
something when the Mohammedan slashes and thrusts into death. We have our rituals too, and
we can die like that, and when we do, our lives are dedicated to His Word. Amok is for idolaters.
The key is humility. This kind of death is redemption. The path to happiness with Mary —
everlasting happiness. A maganda death for maganda life. In the end, death is part of the ritual.
And so many of us end up fulfilling that part of the ritual at the foot of a sacred mountain (Mount
San Cristobal, Taybas).
THIS IS ABOUT DRINKING
When you look at me like that
with those eyes, I can’t resist you.
I’m irresistible. Your teeth
are perfect. And when you smile
and you are wearing that skirt
we taste each other before our lips touch.
Photo of Erwin Ponce
BIO: Erwin Ponce was born in Charleston, WV. He has an MFA from Emerson College. His poems have appeared or in Eastlit, Asian American Literary Review, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, TAYO Literary Magazine, Lily Poetry Review, RHINO, and Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art and Pomona Valley Review. Erwin lives in the Pacific Northwest and works at a public library.