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by Tony Robles Manong Al Born in Fillmore Street dreams Born in a pot of a adobo Born in a bowl of fish and rice Born in a river of patis Born in tomatoes and chili Born in a plateful of jazz Born in sweet potato pie Born with getas on his carabao feet Born with ghettos in his black/brown Brown/black mind Born sucking fingers stained With bagoong Born in Sorsogon dreams in His mother’s mud fish eyes Born in his father’s Fighting fists Born in mud-caked Bulosan Shoes Born in Santos’ broken Exile heart Born in Miyasawa’s sad snow Born in Ryokan’s broken tea pot Born with black and brown Soy sauce rivers on his tongue Born with carabao mud On his skin Born in the alley with Sorro Campos Ricaw Punzal Delfino Villa Rendon Palapas Born in the orchards And in the campo And in the rivers And in the mud And in fish tales Swirling around His Pilipino mind Born sucking Tomato beef chow Mein at Soo Chows On Post Street Born in the rain Of 10 thousand Rice cakes inside the Window at Benkyodo In J-Town Born on Trains carrying Issei and Nisei to Manzanar Poston Heart Mountain Tule Lake Amache Jerome Topaz Minidoka Rohwer Gila River Born on Pine Ridge with A red Lakota Face Born on Tatami Mats riddled with Cat dung and in Sakurai’s mind Crawling with roaches Born in vacant Fillmore lots On door steps with Musicians, pimps, Artists, poets and Prostitutes who’d Ask: How’s your mama? Born in Fillmore Pressing poems between White langendorf bread Squeezing it into a Ball, throwing it at Nob Hill windows Born holding a brown Paper bag with a tape Recorder collecting Manong tears and manong Rivers and manong eyes And manong tongues And manong hearts and A thousand bursting manong Suns Born in the hollow Of Mary Tall Mountain’s Whale bone poems Sharing bowls Of good grease (good good grease) Born in Waipahu lava faces Born in banana leaf dreams Born in the strumming ukelele heart Born in a humming banyan tree embrace Born in the sakada’s bolo Born in the Kali dance Born in the Kris knife sky Born with hands That cry Pilipino Ako! Pilipino Ako! Pilipino Ako! Born on Fillmore Street Ifugao Mountain J-Town Nihomachi Mission Street The I-Hotel Manong Al, Born in the Faces of 10 thousand Children Born in a pot Of adobo Child of 10 thousand Manongs! |
Original Post Date
2009-11-18 12:00 AM
Original Body