Dream in Blood, 2

MANILA, Philippines - (Dolores Carbonilas Yigal, a Filipina), was among the 14 people killed by a lone gunman who then shot himself at an immigration center in the US, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) confirmed yesterday. Philippine Star, April 6/09

Two years ago I put in all the stuff
of my dreams on my luggage.

I have married a man who have offered
love and Star Spangled Banner.

Did I sing the music in my heart
in the Sebuano language that speaks
to me dearly and with it I rode
the waves of seas I know
as if its waters are my body?

I came here to fulfill the demands
of another world
another language that will lead
to that world. I spoke with him
the man who had loved me
even if I did not know how to say
the proper words
but only the wordless intimacies
of what true love gives. 

And so each morning
as the sun slices through the skies
I have come to know for the last two years
away from the sun that warmed
my young years, I have been learning
the short a and the long a
and the other vowels in between
like the schwa that twists your tongue
to make you think of roses in Cebu
to make you taste again the grilled tuna 
that comes from GenSan that extends
my dreams to more waters
to spite those whose politics revile me so
even if I did not understand a bit
what EDSA One meant
what EDSa Two meant
and the coup d' etat of our people's 
restlessness, hunger, pain, 
abstractions we hear from childless priests
and their pontifications like poets
in other languages from the north
of my country to the south of my country
and their greed for self-respect
immortality at the cost of a dollar
infiniteness at the price of artless murder
they inflict upon smaller poets.

They all come in colors, my countryman
and so I have since looked for love
from strangers, hoping that in between
the touch of the real
and the reality of fantasies
I can hit it right with the final recipe
of endless happiness. 

And so I came over to Binghamton,
a universe away from the miracles
of my patron saint the small child of a god
we carried on our breasts 
danced with in a ritual to invoke
the power of love. 

To lose my accent,
this is all what I wanted
and with the spirit of a baylan the warrior
I wanted to lose everything:
the traces, the traces of memory
the traces, the traces of a language
thick as thickness can be
my r's rolled and now I am losing them
to the vowels of my dreams
my grammar getting in there
with the grammar of loving
for the man that made all these happen
in the quick. 

But today I am dead,
and today I dream in blood.

I am felled by an assassin whose sin
is that he did not see my dream
but something else, his head
swollen with grief as my name.

I am Dolores, indeed, the pain
I share with my immigrant killer.

Somewhere I will see him
and I will ask him why
in a Vietnamese heaven's name
did he snap and run away
from the colors of our 
best, warm wishes?

A Solver Agcaoili
Hon, HI/Apr 5/09

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