EILEEN TABIOS Engages
Humpty Drumpfty and Other Poems by Melinda Luisa de Jesús
(Moria Books’ Locofo Chaps, 2017)
Melinda Luisa de Jesús’ Humpty Drumpfty and Other Poems is one of the chaps in Moria Books’
Locofo chap series which intends to produce 100 chaps during the
first 100 days of the new presidential administration. The series is anti-No.
45, and publisher William Allegrezza had noted (in his submission calls) that a
manuscript from 5-25 pages would fulfill a chap’s (logistical page-count)
requirements. de Jesús chap contains exactly five pages of poetry, suggesting
that the project indeed was created specifically for Locofo.
But it doesn’t require more than five pages of poems for de
Jesús to convey the deep distress and protest the author feels in response to
No. 45, or, as she put it, “45’s fuckery.” For instance, No. 45’s
self-aggrandizing rhetoric, by now, has been witnessed by many—but if you need
a reminder, here’s de Jesús:
Hubris
It’s almost as if you know
they’re
not
really yours
really yours
The way you keep
demanding your
ownership of
asserting your
dominion over
the land
the water
women’s bodies
the will of the people.
the water
women’s bodies
the will of the people.
What will you claim next—the
air?
Just know
The gods are watching...
The gods are watching...
The poem could have ended with the last line of the
second stanza: “What will you claim next—the air?” as the question itself
reveals No. 45’s ludicrous stance in attempting “dominion over / the land / the
water…” and so on. It’s interesting,
though, to consider the significance of the last couplet. Certainly, the
uncertainty it presents make it an effective ending, too, for the poem. For one
cannot know if that couplet bespeaks the poet’s wishful thinking, a warning, or
even an “alternative fact.” And if the latter, the alternative to the fact
could be that it’s No. 45’s fellow humans/U.S.-Americans doing the watching, or
that No. 45 in his hubris would not be able to manage “know”ing that “gods”—of
which he is not one—“are watching.”
The poem “Humpty Drumpfty” is both powerful and funny and
attests to de Jesús’ poetic prowess—not many can pull off humor in the service
of a political narrative that presents “some nice Mexican dudes down at the
Home Depot” building a wall that “seemed to move / a few feet north / day after
day” until the border it defined had migrated sufficiently south to Canada,
thus erasing the U.S. That, is wit
brilliantly deployed.
When one looks at de Jesús’ poem “Neocolonial,” one
might glean a source (or part of the source) to the poet’s anger. The poem, dedicated to “… Filipino Americans
who voted for” No. 45 parses the delusional perspectives of Filipino Americans
who, despite having had “our nationalist movement squashed, kidnapped then
beaten into accepting the imperialist’s racist wet dream,” still believe they
are “an asset”:
But have you looked in the
mirror lately?
Your politics may say “white”
but your skin reads:
illegal/terrorist/unwanted/inferior
The poem then continues to note,
There’s no seat for us at Uncle
Sam’s table
We’re just here
…
to serve and clean,
…
grateful houseboys, nannies,
maids, sex workers”
before concluding with
Isn’t it time we stopped doing
the white man’s work?
This is to say, de Jesús (also a scholar, professor and
editor of Pinay Power: Peminist Critical
Theory which is the first anthology of Filipia/American feminisms) brings a
particular history—of her people—to confronting No. 45’s rhetoric and
administration. The rage seems doubled. It’s not just anger at the specifics of
No. 45’s acts, but the acts as well trigger
historical problematics. For example, the Philippines’ inability to create
enough opportunities for its population has led to a brain drain and diaspora
that’s seen many people lapse into the role of “grateful houseboys, nannies,
maids, sex workers.” The all of it creates a potent poetry in protest against
No. 45.
So be it. And,
hopefully, “the gods are watching.” This
was my (welcome) introduction to de Jesús’ poems and I recommend you read them
as I did to be moved by their raw-ed intelligence. (Locofo provides a free .pdf
read HERE.) They may not be worth the price of No. 45’s ascendance (what poem
can be?), but they achieve what they intend and what Locofo intends: protest
and insight. The latter is encapsulated
in the last poem:
Ding, dong, dell
Donny’s in the
well.
Who put him there?
The people,
motherfuckers.
The people.
*****
Eileen Tabios does not let her books be reviewed by Galatea Resurrects because she's its editor (the exception would be books that focus on other poets as well). She is pleased, though, to point you elsewhere to recent reviews of her work: SILK EGG: Collected Novels 2009-2009 was reviewed by Aloysiusi Polintan for Renaissance of a Notebook; and The Gilded Age of Kickstarters was engaged by Jim McCrary for The Halo-Halo Review; and ECSTATIC MUTATIONS was engaged by Aloysiusi Polintan for Renaissance of a Notebook. To date in 2017, she has released two books, two booklets and three poetry chaps. More info at http://eileenrtabios.com
Another view is offered by Steve Klepetar in the March 2017 edition at
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