T. De Los Reyes
at swim
let me tell you the story about my birth
it was at the public pool and oh lord
what do you think is the percentage of chlorine
and piss here how much dead skin is around us
how much sweat how much of this is chemical
warfare I fret while you slowly approached me
in the water I was safe and then you laugh
and say watch now and how you bring both
knees inward then kick straight into
my belly and oh lord have I died I can’t
breathe everywhere is grey and I can’t
breathe this was the big wave and I can’t
breathe here comes the killer
flood that swept the city this was what engulfed us
I wept brushing against dead faces I don’t think
I will make it I am trying to call for help ama ama ama
how much water can a small girl take how much further
can my lungs hold my name let me tell you the story
of a mouth descending on my mouth startling who I was
let me say I emerged whole from the womb that is
my throat let me gasp into the present let me say again
Leap
A leap terrified of faith is a candle eating
its own flame. A shadow chasing its body
backward. A wound refusing to forget.
To leap like a carabao dreaming of wings,
as if a star falling. When the Spaniards came
we were corrupted into devotion, our hands
clasped, heads bowed, indios bent toward
the light. They said leap and we did, over
and over, across oceans, across borders,
across our own doubt, rising out of our
skeletons and sinking into servitude. I was
learning how to love this body when your
lips had finally found it. I am animal and
not altar. You tasted salt on my tongue,
sweat and sea water, learned what holy
means without a church. Must I continue
to leap when I have been famished for
three hundred and thirty years. Hungry
for faith that does not require me to die.
Hungry for the moon’s ribs and all of her
tenderness. Hungry for impossible things.
When my stomach woke in the middle of
my life it grew teeth made of longing.
I wanted to scrape softly your skin.
I wanted to believe ache is its own god.
Come praise we remain brown even with
the world burning. I’m your stranger. Jump.
T. De Los Reyes is a Filipino poet and the author of And Yet Held (Bull City Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, Variant Literature, West Trade Review, and elsewhere. A 2025 VONA Summer Fellow, she has been nominated for Best of the Net. She is the founder of Read A Little Poetry. Read more of her work at tdelosreyes.com.
Artwork: “Smolder” by Daniel Lurie
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