I am a body made of parts,

a multitude I contain and maintain.

white dirt—a mud mask of clay,

a feast to keep the peace against 

 an ancestral appetite for dissent,

I am a magnet for impurities,

sifting in a chokehold of throats

tumors of raptured temperatures. 

residues of chemicals and colonial

honeyed speech and greed for gold

I am loose threads unfurled

Woven into the unconscious

strands of a linear tube,

inserted down into the intestines;

confit, melting in its excess

For I say what is good

capital nourishment

I do what is good for

 the motherland collects.

for as long as there is breath,

the mananambal said, 

While I was in her tummy, mama ate

a meal good for your guts and

a natural filter for a primordial urge,

to protect me so I could play in the dirt.

the mananambal said 

while mama fed me from her own hand 

A child needs to eat their own

share of dirt to eat away 

toxins and to build up an antidote.

from my papa’s bedtime stories. 

is a loom that keeps on giving 

the tapestry of a language I languidly 

acquired to eat away the craving for 

dirt, and to churn it into alluvium. 

entertainment, Father Celdran said,

is capital punishment for idle minds. 

I work hard and I eat off the dust

A multitude contained in me, I extricate,

only hymns of praise for my country.