men and women washing clothes in the river




Families wading

and sitting in the water, 
taking advantage

of a sunny day with the river 
banks behind, barely held together

by the roots of banana trees, 
are more than a two persons high.

Mundane tasks involving 
so much risk, a people’s faith

in the river in full display.




molo road




The few planted electric

posts are not as high 
as the coconut trees 
on both sides of the partition

that forms a semblance of 
a road made of sand.
The edge of a fishing boat

further revealing the topography 
of the Queen City, affluence
from plantations nearby didn’t take root

in this peaceful beach, conduit of empires.



Process Notes:

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collection has over 600 images from the Philippines accessible online to the general public.

The images taken in Iloilo are mostly from a single album titled ‘American expatriate in Iloilo, Philippines.’ Aside from the

years these photos were taken, 1907-1916, there’s very little information about them. Surveying the collection, one can presume

they were captured by an amateur with a combination of curiosity and exoticism regarding the natives of the US’s then new colony

in the Pacific. The poems I’ve written in response to these selected images aims to view them in anti-imperialist and ecocritical lenses,

rather than the conventional ekphrastic mode. The titles for each poem is the exact label on respective photos in the digital collection.