2024

Brief Notes on Jaya Jacobo’s Arasahas

I have always been fascinated with poetry that traverses the terrains of the physical, natural world, and attendant to the world of experience, of the spirit. I enjoy poetry that casts enchantment, not just necessarily from allusions to magic, specters, or other figurations of mystical otherness, but through the very experiential energies of a persona grappling with a world at once familiar but also made strange, navigating a philosophy and poetics of a self in flight, tender but strong, intimately engrossed with its own knowing and unknowing. Jaya’s Arasahas inscribes visions of life that constellates a universe of intimate understanding and linguistic entanglement.

The way I have approached the collection is through an act of “slow” reading. This method eschews the urge to finish the task of interpretation as soon as possible, cognizant of the collection’s steady mapping out of a verse world premised on both Jacobo’s rich sense of place and shaped by her understanding of mobility as a fulcrum through which the poetic image bares  either the quiet and restorative or the confident and disruptive powers of language. In “Mosqueiro,” the persona begins with a declaration “Ito pala’t ito nan ga/ang dulo ng mundo” followed by observations of the quotidian entangled with the meteorological, of the many natural forces that weave the persona’s, and thus the reader’s, relationship to the world around us. This offers a space of performance for the recurring spirit in the collection, of the endless struggle to not only understand the worlds of our vision, but of the insight that all-knowing is secondary to the affective capacities of poetic knowledge and spiritual encounter. In “Stony Brook Souvenir,” the poet masterfully demonstrates that this sense of worldliness is not limited to locale, but cognizant of the transnational mobilities of her memory and verse, an illumination of the ability to transcend the physical borders through the evocation of places as diverse as the Appalachians, Long Island, Philadelphia, and the personae at the heart of each encounter.

In Jaya Jacobo’s “Paloma,” the image of the observing persona and the pigeons in the park articulates a poetic discourse contingent on movement and the figuration of a desire that plays out the intimate and varied dimensions of worldliness, spirituality, and the recollecting self. Suspended in this poetic scene, a fluid dance between wanting in the world and wanting the world, is a narrative logic that clarifies the poet’s own personal histories. Jaya reveals a masterful ability to strike deeply and carefully into vulnerability while never neglecting the world of and around the poet. Her writing and rewriting of the inner and outer dimensions of experience is made possible by a language carefully nimble, purposefully creative, skillfully guided and yet pliant to her performance of (and reflection on) enchantment. The flying pigeons, to my mind’s eye, represents an aspect of Jaya’s work, of a being in flight, an ascension made possible by language, while always in view of both the mystery of what lies ahead and the perpetual embrace of memory from behind.

If I had to describe my love of this collection, I first must point out the coupling of vulnerability and bravery, that each of these poems signify moments in the poet’s life vulnerable and open to the joys, the sorrows, and the uncertainties of a writer always grounded by place but always imaginative, always aspiring flight in language. Each poem is a testament to a sense of craft born out of a natural ability to poeticize, sharpened by the years and the worlds of Jaya Jacobo’s life. I am made more excited for her future traversals, her continued journeys in a life I have always admired, and for her courage to keep moving forward while always looking back in gratitude. This is a tour de force, and I am eternally grateful for Jaya Jacobo’s poetry and her steady poetic presence.

On Politics over Kutsinta

for Kuya Kutsinta

Every Sunday after mass at my Protestant church, a kuya would shout unto church-comers to buy his kutsinta, sold in a white, translucent bucket he carried on his back. When asked about his recipe, he would smile and laugh and cross a hand over his heart; it was made with love, he said, and that was all we needed to know. Regardless of that mystery, these yellow, gelatinous cups of joy soon became the highlight of my Sunday mornings after church. Even more so with the coconut shavings that came in a little plastic baggie, something I would rarely eat unless with kutsinta. I loved them more than whenever we’d go on cross-country drives in Daanbantayan or Busay, in a white MUX my mother got from work. They were small and came at 5 pieces for 20 pesos, a price I was more than happy with. 

With this, I would look for him as the recessional played on the organ and the people shuffled out of the chapel— I called him Kuya Kutsinta, and he was a comfort as he flashed his bright smile, fishing out 2 packs of the kutsinta I so loved. I would trade my sole 50-peso bill for this happiness, which seemed so worth it as soon as my teeth sunk into each cup-shaped goodie. Of course, I would inflate the plastic baggies full of coconut shavings with my breath and toss the kutsinta in them, just as Kuya taught me. You would get an even distribution of coconut shavings per kutsinta, he explained once. 

In that comfortable, upper-middle-class life, I was an 8th-grade student at one of the more prestigious schools in Cebu, where my batchmates were would-be heirs and heiresses to big companies, or related to showbiz or prominent political figures. The school took advantage of this fact and turned canteen prices up— I was 8th grade, and my allowance was 50 pesos, which seemed so small compared to the 1000-peso baon my classmates would have. My mother patted me on the back and said to me, “sige, i-promote tika to 60 pesos inig grade 9 nimo,” a time that never came because of the pandemic. Yet, I was so happy because this meant I would get to buy 3 packs of kutsinta every Sunday, but I digress. 

I was never one to complain about this small injustice: I came to school with a packed lunch that beat all the other stalls at school in terms of how delicious they were. A sign that my parents were never too busy, I learned, as my classmates would compare my warmth-filled food to the sad, cold, 90-peso steamed rice they would get from the canteen. I had snacks, and juice sometimes, packaged with a note from my mom or dad telling me to study hard. 

That was precisely what I did. I was consistently on the honor’s list, and I was a member of the school’s debate team, an experience I would be eternally grateful for as it opened

my eyes to the reality of this world— our world, I would reminisce as I watched bibingka sellers calling out to me from the safety of tinted windows. 

The first morning Kuya Kutsinta wasn’t at his regular post was a somber one. I had saved up 80 pesos, after reasoning with my mom that I needed money to buy cartolina and manila paper for a school project (a simple white lie. My groupmates and I decided to amot money for it, and we bought it at 5 pesos times 5 groupmates in the school bookstore; I did not need the 50 pesos she had given me on top of my 50-peso allowance.) Instead, as I rushed past my church’s white, rusted metal gates, I could not see Kuya Kutsinta and his white, translucent bucket of golden kutsinta. Instead, I saw his kauban, selling pichi-pichi. My mother took one look at my face, disappointed, and decided that we would instead be going into Catmon to buy bibingka

There’s a store right there, our suki— a small, sooty metal roof with those RC cola signages that read “Riza’s Bibingka” in all caps. Ate Riza, a girl two years my senior, would hand over her bibingka to us on the other side of the road personally, never failing to remember that my mom and dad hated the paig ones, and this attention to detail was what made my mom and dad come back every time. She would always give us 2 bags of pakapin bibingka for our patronage, and that temporarily took Kuya Kutsinta and his disappearance off my mind. 

After Ate Riza handed her bibingka to us and crossed the road back, my mother commented about how hardworking she was at her age. “Salig ramong duha ha,” she would tell me and my sister in a chastising tone, “‘di na mo kinanglan magbaligya parehas ni Ate Riza ninyo.” 

My 8th-grade self, ashamed at how well off I was compared to some other people, would sink deeper into the black leather car seat, convinced that other people would do anything to be where I was in life right now— comfortable, sitting in the airconditioned backseat of my mom’s car. Some people didn’t have air conditioning or cars, much less the idea of comfort. 

I glanced at Ate Riza’s retreating form and thought that perhaps if Ate Riza were in my place, I would be the one forced to holler at passing cars, amidst the smoke of bibingka ovens and tambutso, a thought that made me recoil in fear. I did not know my mother tongue well enough to survive on the streets. Safe to say that nagkompyansa ko— I was complacent about where I’d end up because of my peers who would spend their 1000-peso allowance in one day because they were “bored.” This was the mindset that I had grown up in (and grown out of), that my parents were doing all they could to protect me from the shattering fall of reality once I graduated and moved out— that life would

be easy because the properties my parents were investing in would become mine as soon as I hit 18, and with them, their passive income too. I would not need to work, much less work hard

This mindset was thrown out the window as I matured, with exposure to debate motions taken from real-life issues: drug abuse, government corruption, the death penalty, and more. With this somewhat leftist rationalization, all the other kids began to realize this and the ones who didn’t (or did too late) were branded as rich kids who were disconnected from the world, a term that stung their egos despite being the objective truth. The sad part was that even if you were on the “right” side, it was deemed enough to hit like and share on Instagram posts to “spread awareness,” or post a black square on Facebook during the height of the BLM movement. Their efforts of educating people on Twitter never proved anything more than a means to stroke their own politically correct egos, to prove that they were better. 

Empathy was easy, they reasoned. And for some time, I believed that was enough for me. That social justice could be attained with just the right amount of likes, hearts, and care reacts. Yet, where does awareness end and action begin? 

One time, we tackled extrajudicial killings in Social Studies. I went home a different person and tried to bring about my enlightenment to the dinner table when my father simply scoffed as I recounted the statistics to him; about how most of the time, these people were innocent bystanders in the current administration’s War on Drugs. My father laughed as I told him that these were human rights abuses, and told me, “sos, kanang “human rights-human rights” nila? Rason rana nila. Maygani naay gibuhat si Duterte ani.” 

It never made sense to me then, much more now. It felt similar to when a classmate once said that “the poor stay poor because they’re lazy,” and I was able to shut him up by talking about systemic oppression and how so few people make it out of the poverty line. However, this wasn’t exactly the same: disagreeing with my father would mean rounds of debate until he got defensive and shut down the topic. And disagreeing with his ideas meant disagreeing with who he was as a person, apparently, which was how he liked to frame it. I think he disliked who I became after I joined debate, someone who loved to question his doctrines for the fun of it. So for the sake of father-daughter niceties, I hid my newfound courage from him, and it became another skeleton in my closet. 

It was like this for the gays, and every other political issue we fought each other over and then glossed over. I heard his reasoning every day when I looked at the mirror and

saw my reflection: “gay people don’t deserve rights,” he reasoned over meatloaf that one time. “When they come out as gay, they shouldn’t expect the same things as kitang mga tarong— ” he motioned to the both of us. “We are normal. We are fine. They are the freaks.” And my dad goes on and on about friends who “straightened” themselves out over time. “It’s the hormones; love cannot be real between two people of the same gender,” he’ll say, and that was it. I smiled and nodded, hopeful that I was the image of filial piety and understanding as I swallowed back the tears that were forming in my eyes. 

Ever since that moment, I have loathed the taste of meatloaf as it only brings back the memory of that conversation and a newfound sense of lost; when I was younger, my dad loved to say that he was proud of who I was and who I could become. I wonder what he would do if he found out I was bisexual. With this, the already-existent fissure between us widened; I loved my father and only wanted to make him proud. Happy with me, and who I was. I have lived a double life ever since. Who was it that said home is the first place we learn to run away from? 

My mother was quiet until my father excused himself from the table. Then, with eyes shining, she reached for my hand across me and told me that I reminded her of her father, who was outspoken about political issues like this and never backed down from opposition, even as his life was threatened. As my mother is from rural Mindanao, I chalked this up to them not having much of a choice but to be brave— how else were things going to get better if they weren’t? But my mother has stories about election season in her hometown, and how big, scary men would knock at their humble home with guns. 

How this meant that every time elections rolled around, she would be transported to a relative’s house so these big, scary men would not learn of her existence, a potential trading chip in their game of politics. They would intimidate my lolo into voting for people he didn’t agree with, and my lola would hide behind him and beg him to just agree for the sake of their safety. And because my lolo loved his wife, he would. But secretly, he would rally for change. Change that waned as soon as my lolo left his post in their local government to retire into a peaceful life until his death. 

In comparison, my dad was from Ilocos Norte, who lived most of his life under a Marcos fanatic, or my paternal lolo. There is a joke that runs in the family, that all my lolo can talk about is how good the Marcoses were in managing the country. We find that path of his well-traveled, and it sneaks up on you in the most mundane of conversations. Talk to him about Martial Law and he will run on reasons— “the rebels,” he’ll say, having convinced me once, “the rebels deserved to die. They were disturbing the peace.” While

playing with the adobo on my plate as I heard my dad humming in the sink, I realized that my dad must’ve adopted his father’s own views because they were the only ones that made sense to him. When they put Duterte in office, they were both happy because according to them, “the Philippines needed discipline.” 

My dad had nothing but the highest praise for Duterte, who ruled over the country with a heavy iron fist. His ratings plummeted, and he would reason out that it was because of the dilawans, the people who believed in the ideologies of “communists” like Mar Roxas and Leni. I would then ask my father why, if Duterte was such a good president, that Ate Riza still sold her bibingka by the side of the road, instead of going to school. And for this, he had no response. And so did all the other people I asked about Martial Law when I asked about what happened to the poor, to the marginalized. My lolo did not understand that due to his privilege, he experienced a side of Martial Law that no one else did: the “comfortable” side. 

I never really considered myself “woke” or remotely “political”— it felt like a dirty word, derogatory to an extent, and had a performative aspect that I hated. Being “woke” meant sharing posts on your Instagram stories, while there were real people out there who were dying for some corrupt politician’s cause. Philippine officials say that around 6,200 people died during anti-drug operations since their onset in Duterte’s administration. Then we have people like Kian delos Santos, Chad Booc, Carl Arnaiz, and Reynaldo de Guzman; people who make you think, “that could’ve been me.” They were the ones villainized and turned into a societal scapegoat when the real problem came from those who were in positions of power for their own self-gain, and those who stood idly by. 

For Ate Riza, I imagined a reality where I did not wake up at 4 am sharp for school in a dark, air-conditioned room. I imagined waking up in a cold sweat, the Philippine air flaunting its trademarked hot and sticky quality. The sun is yet to peek from the horizon as I rise and tie my hair back to start with preparing the first batch of bibingka. My parents will have already been up for some time, and they invite me to join them. The fragrant smell of galapong— fermented, ground, sticky rice— and how it will stick to every pore of my skin like a brand of the working class I cannot get rid of. 

I imagine how desolate it must be to work the way she has, for her mother to see how hard she will work and how so much of it will be for naught when poverty is as much as a disease as it is inherited, like a generational curse. When Ate Riza is the custodian for her generation, she’ll see generations after her outstretched forever, working as hard as she is only to reach minimum wage like a glass ceiling they cannot break.

Kuya Kutsinta died in a drug raid. I found out a few Sundays after. I was numb until the later hours of the evening. There was no need to imagine desolation when it was right here; when there was so little I could do to bring him back and the memories we shared. Even though I never knew his real name, I hope that his memory was not desecrated and made into a statistic when to many people, he was so much more: a father, a son, a husband. My 8th-grade self wondered how this could’ve happened when he was such a jovial person, so willing to sell his kutsinta for a family he had back home. 4 years later, will it be so unfounded to hope that his family sees this and finds peace? That to other people, he didn’t die a drug-user, but a person. A Kuya

Perhaps the police made a mistake, and mistook his bags of grated coconut for shabu? Was there even any sort of process for him? Was Kuya Kutsinta able to defend himself in the safety of a court, or was his life stolen from him in a halfhearted attempt to eradicate drugs in the Philippines? Did it matter if he was innocent when he was dead? Dead like all those who were like him, people on the streets looking to make an honest living? 

The Sunday we found out he died in a drug raid, the car sat in a pensive kind of silence until my dad spoke up. That it was good that he was gone, for the sake of the kids who used to love him and buy his wares. He even joked that perhaps Kuya had gone so far as to put some amount of drugs into his kutsinta, which was the reason we kept coming back for it. I remembered Kuya, and my inquisitive questions: how he crossed a hand over his heart and said they were made with love. 

Sonic

For my grandfather, Tomàs

 

I only know what I am told.

Such as the continents you wish to conquer,

charted on maps on a decaying wall, a memento 

of islands and archipelago, en tous lieux, scattered.

Or the waves entombed in the cache of your

journal, flagged by the red ribbon suspended

in its spine: surfing every crease and precipice

of every place you named but cannot recognize.

Your hands are instruments of your salvation. 

The pipes, electronics, and homes you fixed and built,

your labyrinthine legacy. Penance for a wasted youth.

I remember the timbre in every plank you used,

the lilt of your longings ascribed in pencil, on footnotes,

using verses of Job, willing the mountains to be moved, 

but I know you are never satisfied.

You never address me by name, but I remember every

story told. Some whispered and some wailed,

contained in your property, to be savored and saved.

You and Who Remembers 

You and Who Remembers 

First light at the district. The avenues barely scorched, and already men and women swarm the streets in their tired suits. Dealers, clerks, aides, an entire colony of commerce trying to catch the minute and its quick steps. Even the sparrows, tired of their melancholy songs, are poised to flee their branches for seeds. The morning is a street yanked out of a dream and thrown into the city. Never mind the signs. Never mind the trace of buses, the vague clamor of old trains. Money has a song, and I have unbound my wrists from timbers. They remain so. This instance, everything’s where it’s supposed to be. The shadow of wings on the pond comes and goes, the beggar asks and never receives. You can tally your debts on the water and hope it remembers. 

 

What Stirs

 

It might as well be disease.

It might as well be question’s echo 

Treading through such dim halls.

 

Whether or not it’s ghost,

It’s looking for passage 

To besiege: 

 

Radio static swelling

Just before the anchor 

Speaks of genocide, intervention.

 

Howls under rusting roofs

Below rustier bombs.

A window after dust settles

 

So you may overlook the wreckage.

You say, Ruin is ruin.

Still, no one rises from a grave.

 

In some cities, wind

Can sometimes be not breeze,

Merely tremor.

Creed

I denounce my victories. I resist my urge to hoist a blade over my days of longing, hours of work, or this ghost of frailty that lets me walk alone. I vow instead to defend my innocence, this luscious oblivion. I yearn to forget my joys – the scent of her hair, a precious meal after a month’s labor, a soft bed after a long day. At this country’s birth, when my people brandished rust to claim their throats, they decried their fears in blindfolds, convinced to pull the trigger or jump into a trench of fresh coals. They gave their arms for lesion. Blood, their word. 

Take what you can, then. I forgo my name. I forgo my money and my sanity. Just leave me my sweet delirium. When the cups clink, when the soprano sings of battles won, bear the fruit of my absence. Place my bones in a good coffin. Permit my ghost to inhabit the dim halls. 

 

After Hours

 

Lampposts forge a fortress on the pavement.

You cross the street, and a car cuts your next step.

You make a call for an extension, a check leaves your pocket

For another bill, your teeth bear the weight of your body.

 

This morning, the sun built a shadow of a house

Inside your house, doubling the walls, the cups on the table.

Night comes to take this away. You drag yourself

From one street to another, all set to start a fire, break

 

The windows, slit the throats of all the dogs who dare 

To bark and race you. A revolution is on the way,

Or so the revolutionaries say. But tonight, your heart is a child

Who had scraped a knee, getting up and looking for a place to stay.

Two Poems

Pony Ride

 

At the emergency room,

trauma and tragedy slip in

and out of the door. Here

is a carousel of chances,

lifeline gliding and bobbing

in circles. Maybe we are all

clowns for even trying.

Sideshow oddities making

a mark under the great big top

of this cosmic joke. Applause

and lion’s roar, cannonballs

and dart-popped balloons.

We fill the quiet with

so much distraction.

More bodies continue

to remind this carnival room

of our fine fine flesh,

cotton candy tissues.

Every minute, pain.

Every minute, a wailing

that signals a soul

transcending the threshold.

And then a swift return

to speechlessness as if

in respect to mimes. 

Sometimes peace 

is a little pony ride

that comes to an end.

 

 

Wear This Shirt Inside Out

 

The ode to a t-shirt is but

an easy riddle: one way

to enter and three to exit.

You are good to go. Give in.

Here’s another one. Piles

in wardrobes and drawers

looking like sad dry lips, folds

mouthing the ancient plea,

Touch me, feel me, hold me

At the mall we reach for the sale rack.

Fifty percent off. Another for eighty.

Add to cart. Proceed to check out.

Repeat a few weeks later.

Worries go well with the latest

trend. This new skin feels great 

until we shed it off revealing

skeletons we have long adorned

with bags, necklaces,

bracelets, earrings, bands

and tattoos, all perfumed

with the smell of crisp ATM cash.

Here’s a phone on credit

to remind us of the world’s next

expiry date. The clerk behind

the counter could only offer a smile.

In our small island province,

another mall grows and

another tree surrenders.

In the last thicket of Calcetta,

we remedy getting lost

by removing our shirts

and wearing them inside out,

to summon a trail before us

and lead us back to home safe

like deliverance. Revelations

via reversals. For some of us

there is no saving from all this,

no matter the times we wear

the shirt inside out. This is

our riddle we refuse to crack.