Queendom by Julienne Maui Castelo Mangawang
A poem reflecting on women's pains and generational trauma rooted in domestic abuse.
First published in Cordite on 1 February 2022.
From the author:
I had been listening to AURORA’s album, Infections of a Different Kind (Step 1), and dissecting the lyrics. The first track in her album is also called “Queendom” and after asking myself, “What does my own Queendom look like?” the answer suddenly walked out as this poem. When I tried to revise it, it wouldn’t budge. Not even a punctuation.
It’s an intense and deeply rooted poem for me now that I am writing about it. I reflected on the pain the women in my family carry and how generational trauma was passed onto me while being intensified by domestic abuse. I knew I had to heal so my future children wouldn’t have to inherit it.
At the height of the pandemic, I met a lot of women who made me change my mind about motherhood. They took me in, provided me with a warm bed, taught me how to garden, and I saw how they nurtured their own families. They showed me how to be a mother and how it was a sacred role to play in life.
In one vision, I saw myself as an old woman surrounded by a lot of people. They were smiling. All I felt was love. When it was time to go, there were more people. They were loudly pounding on drums and chanting—patiently waiting for me on the other side. I smiled. There was so much love.
In a woman’s hands did I meet God branching into ancestors who sang beneath trees, sat among waterfalls, journeyed towards a mountain’s peak, and whispered a message to the wind. They asked her to visit a place her great-grandparents forgot in the ruin of rice fields and bamboo huts.
She saw stories in a pot of tomatoes finally in fruition, the first offering after generations of destruction – the beating of the flesh, a subduing by men who cultivated customs taken from different lands.
Women, she met, taught her how to be still. To break open in daylight. To tap into a reservoir of pain repressed by a dam of generations laid like stones. What life can she have when they are released?
One day, she will wake up to a child kissing her forehead, a stillness she has known in a garden revived, and a harvest to nourish descendants walking out of her. They will learn the message she brought out in poems.
Her hands would have collected more lines in climbing trees, soaking in rivers and waterfalls, and scaling mountains. She will close her eyes and meet ancestors in the cold:
Welcome home.
Julienne Maui Castelo Mangawang is a soul experiencing life. She is studying for her MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines – Diliman. Her poems are in 聲韻詩刊 Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine Issue 50, The Rumpus’ ENOUGH section, Cordite Poetry Review Issue 104: KIN, The Rising Phoenix Review, Novice Magazine Issue 04 and other spaces. You may find her improving communication skills of professionals, connecting with plants, helping out at healing spaces, and raising the planet’s collective vibration. She enjoys chicken adobo with laurel leaves and love. Find her at https://linktr.ee/jmaui or t.hempressm on IG.
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