Prayer for the Kababayan by Yvanna Vien Tica
Digging into people's suffering before, during, and after the American occupation of the Philippines.
First published in decomp journal in October 2021.
From the author:
I used to live near Chicago as a legal alien for almost a decade, where I learned about the Philippines through an American lens—which is to say that I learned little about the Philippines other than the Bataan Death March and that the Philippines was an American territory granted independence after World War II. As such, upon moving to the Philippines and exploring its history, I was shocked and grieved at my ignorance of the suffering that Filipinos went through before, during, and after the American occupation. Yet, I rarely hear of any dialogue about the trauma that the people went through; the more I explore, the more complex the relationships become between colonial history, the infamous struggle with corruption, and social values, all of which I attempted to expand on in this poem through the grief of knowing how willing we are to forget rather than to confront, and from there, grow from, our history.
Voice held inside like a panic. I could never erase myself from the narrative. Just people after people falling & misguided under the weight of the mountain air. We live surrounded by them. My grandfather once told me the mountains used to belong to the communists, another inflammatory mouth to seduce America from its imperialist suburbs. I wish I could lie & say I understand. To this day, our parents are still afraid of the bodies everyone knows stay hidden in the provinces for a reason. I once heard my mother comfort another crying for her son: Panginoon, he was a good man. Panginoon, he was only young & trying unlike the rest of us. He died officially of a stray gunshot from someone’s drunk party. No one mentioned the death threat he received a week ago when he stopped being afraid of it all. Panginoon, he was only trying to help this people. Just people after people disappearing & walking like sunken clouds grazing the forests for warmth. We live surrounded by the stubborn hinges of jaws likening into white masters. Stimulus generalization. How the body of our language accommodated the Spaniards. How I used to be proud of claiming the only country in Asia accustomed to English like a second religion. I could never bring back those boys who died running from point-blank, too aware of the indignity. Too aware of their white gods. Voices held inside like a prayer. Panginoon, we are only trying to live. Panginoon, we are only trying to relieve ourselves of our shadows who also resent their darkness. There aren’t enough words in Tagalog to explain the wish to be white. My grandfather doesn’t remember a day when the mountains belonged to anyone but the people. Another inflammatory debt to be washed and hung to dry. I wish I could lie & say there are enough words in Tagalog to apologize to the mountains, their faces betraying the forced silence like a cry sounding so much like our mothers. Another mouth weeping. Voice held inside for all their people refusing to remember.
Yvanna Vien Tica is a Filipina writer who grew up in Manila and a Chicagoland suburb. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poet Lore, Hobart, and Shenandoah, among others. A high school senior, she is the 2021 Hippocrates Young Poet and the 2021 1455 Teen Poetry Contest Winner. She edits for Polyphony Lit, reads for Muzzle Magazine, and tweets @yvannavien. In her spare time, she can be found enjoying nature and thanking God for another day.
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