Eric Gamalinda's Poetry

There are days when I feel absolute alienation just by being in my own country. This frustrates me immensely first, because I cannot escape this place without resistance and second, because I feel guilty for wanting to escape it in the first place. Last week, my mom and I got into an argument about leaving the country--I told her that Keav and I had talked about leaving eventually. My mom said to me that more and more, people she knew who'd spent the majority of their lives abroad were coming home, regretting having spent so much time in a country that wasn't theirs. And to this, I replied that they come back with the millions they would never have made if they hadn't left--they come back with a nostalgic eye for poverty that sugarcoats everything they see. 

Suddenly box-cart houses and shanties seem absolutely homey now that they don't have to live in them. My mom got cross with me, saying that I would have to work hard if I left--and I asked her if she thought that she didn't work hard by staying here. She proceeded to talk about how things were great here and how we're definitely doing better than relatives who've moved away. The conversation ended with me asking her why it was, then that we were still calling my uncle in New York for shoes; I asked why it was that now, almost two years after my maternal grandmother fell into a coma, we were still being sent cans and cans of groceries from Los Angeles and not the other way around. Any day, I suppose--I would choose the regret of return over the regret of never having gone.

Anyway, just when I thought that I was probably the only person who felt this way or that there would be no way to put this type of sentiment into words, a couple of poems by Eric Gamalinda came to mind and upon re-reading them, I felt my anxiety melt away. I suppose that this is the kind of empathy that can only be offered by a stranger in another country, through writing. :) These two poems are those that have most succeeded at soothing my soul.

Enough

Eric Gamalinda, from his collection Zero Gravity

When my friends decide

they've had enough of America

they start longing for the odor

of fish sauce, the silky texture

of newly cooked rice, warmer weather,

the privilege of cursing

in their own tongue.

When they start talking about

cops on the take, streets

where you can't walk if you're not

black or white, or the empty hollow

you feel after the six o'clock news, 

I know it's happened,

they have packed their boxes

with nostalgia, they have signed their names

in pre-Hispanic script.

And now we are talking

in different languages, 

I can no longer tell them

there is nothing more beautiful than 

crossing east on Tappan Zee Bridge

in the pouring rain, 

or reading Walt Whitman, 

or listening to Miles Davis

right after the sun has set or even

just the punctual clangor of the mailman

who moves with the sadness

of afternoons in Havana.

Lately I've been getting

strange letters in my box,

postmarked on a date

that has not yet happened,

and I open them all

as though they have always

belonged to me,

and everything I am about to say

is already being filed

in an office with no windows

by a clerk who marks an x

before my name simply because 

it is his duty to do so.

Some day I'll send everyone a card

with nothing in it, only

the calligraphy

of a river, and on the back

with invisible ink I will say:

Forgive my happiness,

I have betrayed you all.

The Opposite of Nostalgia

Eric Gamalinda

You are running away from everyone

who loves you,

from your family,

from old lovers, from friends.

They run after you with accumulations

of a former life, copper earrings,

plates of noodles, banners

of many lost revolutions.

You love to say the trees are naked now

because it never happens

in your country. This is a mystery

from which you will never

recover. And yes, the trees are naked now,

everything that still breathes in them

lies silent and stark

and waiting. You love October most

of all, how there is no word

for so much splendor.

This, too, is a source

of consolation. Between you and memory

everything is water. Names of the dead,

or saints, or history.

There is a realm in which

—-no, forget, it,

it’s still too early to make anyone understand.

A man drives a stake

through his own heart

and afterwards the opposite of nostalgia

begins to make sense: he stops raking the leaves

and the leaves take over

and again he has learned

to let go.