my father, his back

                         I would in childhood

vaporub, and try to knead

                         the knots he spent

his day jeepney driving,

                         swollen exponentially by his

passengers who would tap

                         him on the shoulder to hand

over their loose coins, there

                         where for days I rode shotgun

to conductor for him.

                         Certainly do I remember

the unergonomic spaces

                         in which my father almost

24/7 boarded people

                         onto the first entrance

step, the pathway narrow

                         and adjacent squeak rusty

steel bars to flail,

                         backrests used to tender,

unlucky carapace,

                         how unanthropomorphic

each anthropometric

                         measurement, why still we’re

designed the lengths

                         we’re nevertheless willing

to go to. The macho

                         martyrdom of suffering, our

own crucifix pointed at

                         trajectories of foreseeable futures

where beckons the light we

                         for each other make way after,

though all that light is

                         Third World. Came the overseas

years my father dyed

                         textiles in Korea, big rotary

printing machines guzzling,

                         resounding his hunger, or

how at least he made

                         do with it, while in China,

where he would later be

                         relocated, the pebbles to

manufacture for production

                         cemented the market,

balikbayan boxes fat

                         with sweets and sweat, more

verdant now the grass

                         though no longer uprooted

from organic soil.

                         Meanwhile in the Philippines

I live with my sister, who

                         during graveyard shifts

worships Americans twelve

                         different time zones away

from earth, the world

                         within that earth, using

the same Americanized

                         accent to prove her English,

she’s ashamed, is not broken,

                         using rapport to prove

that in order to belong,

                         give it time, belong before

the actual feeling of

                         belongingness, gullibility:

my father in abroad,

                         my sister in another call,

the men whose beauty

                         I keep coming back to

for my shame to see

                         the whole source of.

When did memory

                         become the elsewhere

we want immediate,

                         and elsewhere the place we’re

wont to linger, and

                         Do you have to, do you have

to, do you have to let it

                         linger? ask The Cranberries.

I don’t answer and instead

                         sing along, my diction pseudo-

American, my voice rendered

                         into song, the song through which

to lip-sync all prayers

                         home, where my father is other-

wise unalienable, and

                         where my sister, not her customer

service calls, is always

                         right, the last veneer of her

empathy and his sinew

                         I’m given to both coolness

and expertise for which

                         they will be paid, policy-wise,

dollar-wise, which means

                         higher peso-value converted,

remitted to my name,

                         above which is where finally

I plunk my hands down,

                         I sign the implied promise,

my family to bliss.