Malacampa: After the Funeral

Did Spaniards foresee fate when they named this place?
Flat land with heat that hung like death.
Did they know? Could they have known?
Did silver shorn horseman sense that blood would sow the fields?
Could that be why they left?
Did they know that relics from their days - pesos -
could not bring back pride,
and that this bad swirled from nowhere.

My Filipina Grandma had been gone three days,
and the squatters have come forth and feasted
after holding back on their tributes of rice,
and the cousins have gossiped the open casket,
swearing only bad would stem from space
between dead head and wood,
and now no more fires are lit under the morn mango trees -
as the fire ants know enough to flee the scene.

A priestly donation turned into a Range Rover.
Parcels of land re-divided in secret.
Jeepney drivers give no quarter as they sport fresh new tires
leaving an empty house sucked to the marrow.

Now we husband our coins,
give the maid just what she needs and no more,
sit in the house, play cards, and refuse to be bewitched
by five-ace hands,
listening to how a carabao brained Uncle good as we
put out the call to Manila.

Now we hear the baranguay cock its ear,
hear the New People's Army stalk and wait,
even hear the heifers moan at the moon -
knowing that she's gone, and why.

Even the mosquitos cease their buzz -
not wanting to labeled a bloodsucker,
not on this night
- under a bad camp moon,
with a Luzon barrio scarce of breath
under the lunacy of the thick blood moon.