The Demanding Gospel
For Sunil Stephens
“Luke’s Gospel is a gospel of mercy; it emphasizes Jesus’ identification with the poor and the lowly, and His willingness to forgive sinners. Yet it is also a demanding gospel, for it shows that being a follower of Christ requires sacrifice and commitment.” —St. Luke: The Beloved Physician, from https://catholicexchange.com/st-luke/?mc_cid=417d5274b6…
nearly every Wednesday at 5 p.m.
i switch on FB livestream to listen & watch
as a pastor elaborates on The Word
while i distractedly adjust the volume
of my electronic device & curse the
lagging WiFi
i give up my sacred Netflix hour
or an hour i could’ve spent
within the pages of Sôsuke Natsukawa’s
The Cat Who Saved Books
i tell myself, girl, you can be
swinging on a star,
happy just the way you are
you can contentedly fix
pre-supper (the before-six diet)
or better yet, spin your
YouTube mix of Alexandre
Tharaud piano pieces
but the pull of The Man
is too strong to resist, he
who pitied a malingerer
& idler like me,
who stemmed the flow
of blood from my insides
when my womb protested
against any more
children
si si si, Pastor Sunil,
i shall end this before
it gets more embarrassing
for thee & me
but not before
our Man grants us reprieve
so we can have a hearty
brekkie before singing
morning’s praise songs.
As the World Burns
“We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”
—António Guterres, United Nations secretary general, in The New York Times, Nov. 8, 2022
we hardly leave the house, thus the car can run
on a thousand pesos worth of gas. the gas
can last us three weeks
you said it would be the last car you’d ever buy,
the last to take us from here to there until you
croak first & i return to being a commuter.
or i leave this world & its troubles first
& you’d keep this auto that runs on Caltex Silver,
keep it for runs to the grocery & pharmacy.
visits to friends more graying than you are,
trips to the orchidarium for garden soil, the
occasional potted plant that you fancy.
elsewhere i shall burn brighter
than yesterday’s sunset!
Living in a Virgin Forest
the people’s army declared bath day for women,
for city girls unused to passing days without a full shower.
in the summer of ’84 i learned to bathe in a shallow brook
under a canopy of trees in a forest in Agusan del Sur
while on the surrounding hillocks that served as walls
stood armed guards with their backs to us.
we splashed clear running water, quickly rubbing &
soaping our intimate sides while dressed down to
our panties, bras & batik malong, then we are reminded
that a revolution is not a picnic, but from our giggly
exchanges it seemed we just went on a rural excursion
i recall no exhaustive shampoo that could cleanse
my scalp of its three-day itch, no private divisions
of physical space that could allow me to change
a soaked sanitary napkin but i managed to,
holy mother of God, i managed to
& i learned that true riches do not reside
within concrete walls sheltering ill-found wealth
they’re in the shared meal of rice, salt & red chilies,
in the shared shelter made of waterproof plastic where
nights of rain are considered rhythmic music,
in the stories freely shared about imprisonment,
torture & cinematic escape, in the strum of a
solitary guitar that breaks the night’s silence
living in a virgin forest is not magical for the many
but to me who sought for meaning in my life
it was the awakening my soul & body needed.
