04-19-2025, 12:48 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-19-2025, 12:51 AM by RiverNotch.)
Kapampangan women come
bearing some dinuguan---
my dead aunts, somehow still waiting,
shrunk to morning shadows fading---
while the men their crosses bear
and we children stop and stare.
Here are doctors watching for
signs of heat stroke in the poor;
there, less needful sacerdotes
calling for some capirotes,
who can argue that the men
do not do this all in vain,
spilling blood before such tourists
as soon wonder: "Where's the sisig?"
bearing some dinuguan---
my dead aunts, somehow still waiting,
shrunk to morning shadows fading---
while the men their crosses bear
and we children stop and stare.
Here are doctors watching for
signs of heat stroke in the poor;
there, less needful sacerdotes
calling for some capirotes,
who can argue that the men
do not do this all in vain,
spilling blood before such tourists
as soon wonder: "Where's the sisig?"