Despedida for the Last Despedida
By Troy Osaki
After Natasha Tretheway
In the Philippines, we abolish goodbye parties for Filipinos
who don’t want to leave—become overseas Filipinos.
Every colonizer wants to be remembered—see our country
whose name is a Spanish king’s name. Philip in Filipino.
The smell of mined dirt is gone. Chevron swims back
to America weeping. We watch, laughing—us Filipinos.
In a monsoon, we bring Andrés Bonifacio’s glowing bones
to a sugar plantation. There: an army of peasant Filipinos.
Their first 53 years spent lovingly burying piles of land-
lords. Every bloomed mango belongs to a farming Filipino.
My grandpa left & didn’t come back. Years later, I lay
in the river he washed in—my body, like his, Filipino.
His last name is my middle name, Verzosa. Spanish
as am I & millions of breathing Filipinos.
