ALOYSIUSI LIONEL POLINTAN

After Alex Tizon’s article "My Family’s Slave" as regards Eudocia Tomas Pulido 

(The Atlantic, June 2017)

Reverse Longing

she misses her plate of steamed broccoli served

every breakfast in Minnesota:

her hometown of

milkful fantasies sautéed in deep-fried anchovies,

she misses everything about her birthplace, the

musky scent of her bed sheets after a rowdy night

of midnight love, glossy doorknobs she always

touched to relish her nook’s modest air.

milk, broccoli, anchovies, bones of townsfolk

sardines, plates shaken a bit,

splinters of black coffee on the centerpiece

could not be found under nipa, bamboo, rattan,

only swaddling linens

for healing chicken pox

and phlegm blended with rust.

In Fetal Position

In fetal position

I think of a poem’s saddest lines

While eyeing the room’s darkness

I imagine cruelties

When gripping my knees

Thoughts of resurrection fill me

Listening to my own breaths

Night chill hardly seizes me

Sticking to that posture

Impending nightmares wake me up

Biting my lower lip and tongue

I pay attention to every heartbeat

In fetal position

I think of a poem’s saddest lines

Night chill hardly seizes me

I imagine cruelties

Aloysiusi Lionel Polintan is a Senior High School Coordinator of Divina Pastora College in Gapan City, Nueva Ecija. He loves reading and writing poetry, and everything that ranges from Bob Dylan to Hozier, and from Mahalia Jackson to Christina Aguilera. He is doing research on intangible cultural heritage of Southern Novo Ecijanos. He maintains a blog, http://renaissanceofanotebook.blogspot.com