Ernesto Priego has left a good comment to my “I white center versus black brown other existing marginally and only in relation to that I white center” poetry post here. Craig Santos Perez and Paolo Javier have very thoughtful blog posts as well.
In the meantime, responding to Ernesto’s comment, “I think that a tangential approach that advocates a different understanding of poetics is really important,” I would like to call your attention to Jaime Jacinto’s poem, which I have included in OCHO #16.
The image of the “gift” of the missionary daughter’s hand-me-down high heeled shoes given to Inang, who then throws them into the sea in the poem’s first three stanzas, I have always loved. It’s pretty succinct: the missionaries and their families believe they are giving the people something altruistically, and they believe so strongly in their benevolence. In reality, what the missionaries are offering the people as gifts have little to no practical value in their worlds, and to their practices. The people have done just fine without the missionaries’ God and discarded possessions.
Not only are the high heeled shoes something Inang has no need or practical use for, but Inang’s femininity and standards of beauty are not defined or determined by the missionary daughter’s fashion accessories. I would also add that the missionary’s daughter knows the shoes not to be of practical use to Inang; therefore, I question the sincerity of the gesture. Additionally, I believe the gesture indicates the missionary’s daughter believes she herself to be the standard of femininity and beauty by which Inang must abide.
Here is Jaime’s poem:
World’s Fair, St. Louis, 1904
I.
Inang, stares at the camera
Tells a newspaper man
About the winter she rode a steamboat
Across an ocean to California,
Where she tossed overboard
A pair of black-heeled shoes-
Gifts from the missionary man’s daughterWith feet so wide, so used to walking
Barefoot across the cordillera,
What use were those laces and buckles?
That harness of leather tongues?What was promised that she would leave
Her village of terraced mountains,
Land of green and rain?II.
By day I lived beneath
The Saint Louis sky
And at night, a plaster ceiling
Of painted stars.
I lit the straw.
I stirred the meat
Boiling inside a charred iron pot.I’d squat and fan
The yellow sparks
The grey smoke curling
From the dog fires.And they’d watch me and wince
At my calloused knees,
My toes caked in dust,
My empty gaze.When they called us names
We spoke back to them in
Our Waray, Tagalog,
Our Bontoc, Bagobo,
Our Ifugao.III.
We displayed them like dolls
Measured their bodies
Photographed their faces
Recorded every detail of
Their coarse hair, the shape
Of their ears, their splayed feet,
The girth of their sex
Even the temperature of their bloodAnd day after day
For one buffalo nickel
Folks dressed in their finest
Lace and linens paid to stare
And they would returnIV.
My dear devil children
Creatures of our Christian illusion,
Reason for our domination
And why we dream of your copper skin,
The flies hovering at your hips,
Your bare backs
Smooth hairless bellies
The dark oily hollow of your thighs.V.
Who posed for that final photo?
Who was the real babarian?
Was it that missionary man’s daughter,
Her heart full of prayer,
Her hands whiter than the dead coals
Of a open firepit?Or was it you, lost and wandering
The fairgrounds, an amulet hanging
From a cord around your neck,
This gift of your history,
This reminder of home.
Tags: Jaime Jacinto
