El Ghibli - rivista online di letteratura della migrazione
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bomba
joel barraquiel tan
each night i come home
close my door throw my keys on the counter
take my socks off with my feet carelessly
throw my jacket & myself on the couch to
contemplate the evening news
& yesterday's bills
each night i come home
i hear the neighbors talkin'
the sirens screamin' fold the shutters
& shut the drapes sitting in the dark
i close my eyes & resist the temptation
to look out & see if anybody's
lookin' in.
each night i come home
enter the carport park & head towards
my unit as i walk past the stable of cars
i check to make sure no one can see
that i've dropped
faggot
into the trash bin & threw in
pilipino
for good measure i hide
poet
in the bushes & bury
man
near the drain i slip into the laundry
room & quietly slide
activist
into the dryer & leave both
intellectual
& ignorant
to soak in the washing machine
overnight by the time i get to the
door the only thing i've got
left is this morning's paper &
an uneasy feeling that morning will
once again ask me to find what i've
hidden & to fetch what i've flung
to start another day in los angeles.
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the worth of things (for silvia)
joel barraquiel tan
I am prepared to offer you a thousand liars
for one farmer. A dozen lawyers for a single
crop of grain & ten thousand premeditated
omissions for one early spring.
For that matter I will give you two known
drug dealers, a nation of soldiers & one pope
for a summer spent with a chair maker or
a short but brilliant romance with a fisherman.
I am willing to throw in a dozen gala night club parties,
an unreasonable mound of cocaine, three ice-cold
vodka gimlets, & a carton of cigarettes for
two well-written poems & one unforgettable play.
Right now, I'll offer you one breathtakingly
beautiful man, two revealing late night phone calls
& a drawer full of pager numbers for two beautiful
children: one named Nino, the other, Mahal.
I'll offer you the AIDS movement, a decade of sadness
& rage, low-interest credit, the World Bank, Silicon Valley
the Father, the Son, & the Holy Ghost for one ringside ticket
to a celebrity death match between Karl Marx & Michel Foucault.
I would surrender one bachelor's, five master's degrees,
a dozen PhDs, an all expense paid trip to Spain, MTV,
& the entire field of anthropology if I could just
learn to speak Tagalog again without tripping on my tongue.
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angeleno
joel barraquiel tan
i wished for the longest that i was Jewish
so that i could live up in the hills,
& drive a brand new convertible
then my dad would be alex trebec
like this chick Nikki, who i had in
Geometry
i wished for the longest that i was Black
like my best friend Tre-dog
who had a mean temper & keloids
'cept i wouldn't keep a jheri-curl
cause it looked like it would fuck up all
my collars
i wished for the longest that i was Messikan
cause i likeded the way tres flores pomada
smelled in my friend Sleepy's hair.
wished i could crease my khakis razor sharp
& grow a goatee before any of the other kids did
i wished for the longest that i was a WASP
so i can hang out at the Sherman Oaks Galleria
& contemplate between Harvard or Brown
in front of corn-dog-on-a-stick
i wished for the longest that i was Japanese
so that i wouldn't have to cheat in Algebra
& so that i could hang out with
girls named Satomi & Miyumi
who ate seaweed for lunch
& folded paper, cool-like
origami
i wished for the longest that
i was Castillian like my god brother Ricardo
who has red hair & green eyes
so i can brag about summers in Madrid
& complain about
how dreary & provincial Manila can be
i wished for the longest that i was all-Chinese
so i could eat mooncakes
get red envelopes stuffed with
money make plans to own Manila someday
maybe then Papa would be proud of me
i wished for the longest that i was all-Pilipino
so i could make fun of the Chinese
eat barbecued goat hooves & have a
real ethnic last name like Kabongbong or Alvarez
maybe then Mama would feel avenged.
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