One
Question, Several Answers
Barbara Jane Reyes
After Claire
Kageyama-Ramakrishnan
Where did your father live?
House
of Bamboo, Isle of Gold.
Where did your father live?
Tall
reeds at the riverbanks.
Where did your father live?
Near
the estuary, in a man-made refuse heap.
Where did your father live?
By
a deserted mango tree.
With
mangoes, oversweet mangoes dropping from that tree.
Where did your father live?
Battlefield
trenches.
Where did your father live?
With
binds of hemp rope.
Dirt
floor and no bed.
Where did your father live?
Waiting
in hulls to see the sun.
Waiting
in cages like an animal.
Waiting
for a state of grace.
Where did your father live?
In
the forest cathedral.
Where did your father live?
With
his sisters,
Ancients
-- Diwata, Diosa.
Where did your father live?
In
Mama Mary's heart.
Where did your father live?
Exodus,
Revelation.
Where did your father live?
With
5 iron brands.
With
typhoons and swamp grass.
With
years as a guerrilla, warfare erasure.
Barbara Jane
Reyes
was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in the San Francisco Bay
Area. She
is the author of Gravities of Center
(Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San
Francisco (Tinfish Press, 2005), and Diwata
(BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010). Her chapbooks, Easter
Sunday (2008), Cherry (2008), and
West Oakland Sutra for the AK-47 Shooter
at 3:00 AM and other Oakland poems
(2008) are published by Ypolita Press, Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs,
and Deep
Oakland Editions, respectively. Her poetry, essays, and reviews have
appeared
in Latino Poetry Review, New American
Writing, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, XCP: Cross Cultural
Poetics,
among others. She is an adjunct professor in Philippine Studies at
University
of San Francisco. She lives with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo, in
Oakland.