An American Delusion

When AMERICA frees you
                  from Soleimani,
you Saigon jungle people who
                  scurry
from your boondocks will greet
                  the liberators
of Guam from the Spanish clutches
                  around your
Caribbean island. Rest easy,
                  Little Brown Brothers,
for AMERICA is here to frack
                  every gook rallying
from the sand against First Secretary
                  Hussein—no Comrade
of yours. You will shout freedom
                  from camptowns,
built to protect you from
                  the Supreme Leader of North
Sal Salvador, keeping you stale
                  so you can gather bananas
& maintain our AMERICA abroad
                  so that one day you can
unearth each of your fingers
                  to dig that liquid black gift of
freedom.

—

                  in the
                  salish sea,
          our clock     glistens
               from              the wake:
          when a            blaze breaks
      the lavender,          we call the embers
morning;                             a wrestle between
                  desperate         ray and
           relentless                      cloud, we name
their romp                                      the afternoon; if amber
                     blinds the            retina, we bid
                  good night                   to the sun; if ice seems
      to shimmer                                                   in waves as above,
we greet                                                                            the night.
                     the stern churns             a teleology
                  into birth,                                   branching timelines
    like cedars                                                     evergreening into the shore.
                                  can we burn                 the water’s waxy
                             leaves into                                    necessary medicine?
               will we breathe                                                 its smoke until our
      memory                                                                                  scars over? or will these
our time                                                                                                  be denied from us until the shoal
                                  beds                                                     the dead
                  into the grains                                                                of an hourglass?

Adrian De Leon is an Abagatan (Southern) Ilokano writer and educator from Manila by way of Scarborough. He is the author of Rouge (2018) and barangay: an offshore poem (forthcoming 2021), and Poetry Editor of the collection FEEL WAYS: A Scarborough Anthology (forthcoming 2021). He is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

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