Tribute
By Eric Abalajon
My coffee tries to push back the basement chill
crawling up my legs, as I read a friend’s message.
I want to describe to you my table, Mayamor.
I remember your poem where you simply
list the towns won over by,
and sustaining, the movement.
It was, however, a security issue to publish it
in any mainstream venue, even a college folio
as it could be used as a blueprint for retaliation.
Safe to assume in this protracted fight,
our enemies read our poems as well.
The piece is an interesting rejoinder to
the image of a subversive poet, one not writing
witty metaphors against tyrants
but labors in naming of an emerging realm.
I would like to imagine, it was drafted
in folded cigarette packs during breaks
from long treks where you were
embracing fauna, seldom
acknowledged allies to armed encounters.
Another thorn of living in the
other side of the world is
the unease waking up to tributes for you.
Evenings is when we grieve our martyrs,
but I get to feel your weight of your life
on my chest, like Mount Napulak, in broad daylight.
Eric Abalajon is currently a lecturer at the University of the Philippines Visayas, Iloilo. His works have appeared in Ani, Katitikan: Literary Journal of the Philippine South, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, and elsewhere. Recently his poems are included in the collections Sobbing in Seafood City (Sampaguita Press, 2022) and Footprints: An Anthology of New Ecopoetry (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). He lives near Iloilo City. You can find him on Twitter @JLaneria and on Instagram @jacob_laneria.
Image credit: “Cemetery of San Joaquin,” Iloilo, Philippines, by EdseastresD600, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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