sea-chorus

after Danez Smith

I swallow men whole 

sweep entire streets into my mouth 

pick at the gaps in my teeth with your 

buckled houses     I need no church bell 

I arrive before your God awakes

sound like     wooden spoons walloping 

a child’s cheek     tree splintering in the wind 

pus-wound splitting open     my silt hips shake thick 

like swamp mud     fracture each makeshift altar 

with a lover’s brined bones    pick the metal locks 

of your precious gate     like unhinging a finger

I must see all I swallow    so I pluck your chattering 

roof open         there you are     come now, 

walk out to my wall of water     & drink yourself home 

[  ] 

I walk out to a wall of water     the silver of waves

hungry to swallow us     like pigs  

nanay sings     you cannot swim from the wind   

galvanized iron will not stop an ocean’s cha-cha 

midturn      but you can leave this world in your own 

home     so I join her     our rocking chairs swinging

with the mango trees     outside I hear the slow throat

of street cats drowning     the water, a night blue

-head of hair     all of our town, caught in her knots  

o rosary of broken teeth    altar of plants dying

o how the water flies across our houses   

the wind crumpling us to the next barangay 

our taped roofs     gone again

our bodies      severed in half  

[  ] 

I sever my body in half     

my ribs a galaxy of lifeboats     

send guyabano leaves down the river    

tilt an infant’s nostrils to the sky   

pluck gills into the boy who sells gabi 

on the corner     & now he breathes

beneath water too     the boy finds 

his favorite ball      wedged beneath a ship      

now dragged onto our sidewalk    its air still full     

the orange sun calms his mother down 

from the coconut tree     imagine your missing

are somewhere resting     on the gentle lap 

of a wet car’s bones     a barnacled home 

a nameless ghost 

[  ] 

what good is a nameless ghost?  

today I walked out of my house alive     

& saw mountains for the first time 

since I was a child      where are the trees?     

where are the houses?      

sometimes the wind is a fist     or

ten toes clawing into a back or

the last grip before a garbled farewell

do you remember what ocean smells like 

after a storm? malangsak!     when the sea wades

on our street still     I can’t get the taste

of fish guts & slow mud out my nose 

my hands shake the table     

or is this another wave coming? 

[  ] 

is this another wave coming? the walls shake 

& we almost think it’s an earthquake 

but then see the men running     

their feet pounding     slipperless & panting 

bamboo poles bouncing atop their shoulders     

your aunti screams they’re carrying bodies 

we make the sign of the cross to simple tarpaulin 

until there are too many legs 

dangling like a snapped chicken’s neck       

the cemetery is still flooded      

so we dump our dead in the plaza 

a field of children      piled into black-mud holes 

almost like craters of a second moon 

almost like we were planting them 

[  ] 

what if we were planted, instead? 

what if the mass grave was just a garden 

you weren’t afraid to visit     our twisted limbs 

a shallow root system emerging through soil    

pick santol from atop our heads    come now     

& count our toes    marking each year you survived the storm    

what if the children swept to sea all learned to swim?     

what if they met an elder in the middle of the ocean     

smoking a pipe made of sugar cane      her wrinkled arms     

a raft to rest on      she whispers tell me your stories 

& they speak of waves that touched the sky

before swallowing their families    hush, na.

they float & the elder blesses them in warm rain 

a ghost visiting their sleep 

[  ] 

sometimes I think ghosts visit my sleep 

each time it rains     the house smells of rot again

I wake & find my hair salt-wet soaking 

my clothes smell of mothballs for weeks   

what good is a death anniversary shared 

by your entire family? who will light the candle 

when no one is left undrowned? I weep

for my mother & press my ear to water     

instead of an international phone call 

there are too many babies beneath this soil 

without even a shoebox to hold them 

I stare at my hands & see the white eye

of a storm forming      I keep dreaming 

I drowned my family 

[  ] 

write me a poem where your family never drowned

there are no bodies severed in half 

your ribs are just your ribs

write me a poem with no ocean 

a poem where you name the ghost 

there is no wave coming, remember      

there is no ocean the children swim 

then walk themselves back ashore     alive 

remember, there is no ocean 

this time, plant a tree on unbothered soil 

this time, there are no bodies to undead    

only a slow-dance waiting

your mama in the kitchen 

asking you to take her back to the sea.