This piece is part of the Imagined Histories folio, which features art by Devyn Mañibo.

The sky is a century
with no windows that I see
no doors no roof no fire
the river is a choir

of fathers falling as ash
and mothers who crowd the sky
with songs written by ghosts
my heart falls a century

“My father told me that when
the Katipuneros
invaded Macabebe
they took all the men inside

the church and lined it with bamboos
to burn them all. The Sungas
begged the insurrectos to
spare the men and just burn

the Church” the river and sea
save names for you Ancestors
in a bowl of malunggay
on stars of the Southern Sky

fish forest birds mangrove roots
as dust in my hair damp wind
you rise off the bangka bow
your names curl into me

Notes: This untitled tanaga opens with a line from a poem by Eduardo Corral. The italicized text is a quote by Alfonso Leyson Jr. from The Burning of Macabebe by Ian Christopher B. Alfonso, Angeles City, Philippines: Center for Kapampángan Studies, 2024.

The 300 Names: Now They Are Birds

The Names of the Dead Swim through Us

Author’s Note: “The 300 Names: Now They Are Birds” and “The Names of the Dead Swim Through Us” are augmentations of photographs taken by American “Thomasite” teacher Luther Parker in 1901 (Church at Macabebe, Luther Parker Collection [LPC], National Archives, Manila). The Philippine American War (1899–1913) had begun. Parker was documenting the 1899 destruction of Macabebe, Pampanga, a coastal stronghold in central Luzon. My father, Jesus, was born in Macabebe in 1903, four years after the entire town was razed. I imagine that for my father and his family, the church’s ruins stood for sorrow, decades open to the sky and yearly monsoons. What is it like to grow up among a traumatized populace who are trying to live inside a war? In May 1929, long before the rebuilding of Macabebe Church was completed, my father left home for good on a cargo ship bound for San Francisco. These poems document my grief over the violence he and so many are born into. They are for my unknown ancestors who died in the sangre y fuego massacre on April 27, 1899, and for those souls lost in ongoing massacres. Now they are birds.

The first photograph includes hand-written text by Parker: Church at Macabebe. Inside view of church showing the great length and the large central arch of which there are four. One has fallen in forming the pile of stones in the foreground. The picture was taken from the altar. 1901.