Sa Kabilang Mundo (In the Other World)
Written by Kaya Ortiz, Illustrated by Angel Nguyen - September 3rd, 2020
Sa kabilang mundo (in the other world)
i.
what do I know of legacy?
remembrance
a mouth inked in smoke,
worlds fingering the dream-dust
what was surrendered to the water
sharpens when the thunder calls
elegies return to the sky
until a song is just a song
what can survive the violence of
ships, the breeding darkness?
in the glass, a blur of light
in the light, a revelation
what is blood without earth?
a body released from gravity
calls a chasm its home
I am only what is given to me
ii.
they do not lay siege to
our names
I am green as
the moss-soft riverstone
a word
its harmony hum
I go with them
calling, calling
grief blown into
the wind like ashes
a palmful of seeds
in child hands
I live a thousand lives
a hundred thousand lives
in this one in this one in this
I am alive and alive and alive
assimilation is not my name
a name: ancestor,
a thread i answer
at last –
she says, what if
they think you are
full-blooded filipino?
spanish surnames
conjure colonies,
at least for us –
( i have origamied
a name out
of shape before
made my mouth
a winded thing,
for who? )
i am still learning
to parse a body
out of theory
let me let go of
the old white lie –
water in blood
( after all, isn’t
australia also
a name
enacted,
tacked on like
an afterthought? )
remember: southern
land, white history
erases nothing –
there is still every
before / before
/ before
( assimilation is
not my mistaken
mispronounced
name is not any
body’s name is not
whitewashed country )
so i begin with a name:
trace it, coil my tongue,
a river threading
back
back / back
back.
"The two poems I chose are reflections on colonisation and its ongoing effects. In recent years I’ve become more aware of how deep the violence of colonisation runs. With this awareness, it’s important that I acknowledge my privilege as a migrant settler on stolen land and as a person of mixed ethnicity. My poems explore what it means to be a descendant of colonial violence and to experience present-day forms of it via the pressure to assimilate to whiteness."
- Kaya Ortiz