like a ton of bricks...

Many of the writers this go-round have sought to use their poetry as a way of communicating their neck of the woods directly, and for that I am utmost thankful. I swear to you, I would have probably never known near a thing about the Inuit people, and the lush descriptions of their life, if it weren't for dg nanouk okpik. (much, much more on her in class, but I just had to start off by saying that)

...Nor would I have gotten literally walked through the Benigno Aquino Jr. International Airport, if it weren't for Nick Carbo. His writing gripped me, in that he packs every line with a cinematic experience of place and voice -- in the instance of the poem "The Bronze Dove", he tells the tale of a Filipino-American visiting The Phillipines. In three parts, the ride gets increasingly intense, in both detail and what is shown.

"you scratch your neck, feel the grime and sweat
from San Francisco or L.A. on your nape,
you look out your window seat
search for a plaque or a stain of blood--
this is the tarmac where he was shot."

He truly wastes no time giving the Disneyfied (hey!) tour of The Phillipines, but instead uses it as a platform to address several wounds that have yet to heal for the country. I also appreciate his chillng, somewhat tongue-in-cheek directions in parenthesis to truly witness Bengino Aquino's assassination. In the second portion, he makes a pit stop to display the class difference at hand, with "barbed-wire hiding the luxury homes/of Dasmarinas Village", schools, and in the next stanza, a sharp insight into children with amputated arms asking for money, on the corner of Edsa and Buendia. It is unclear as to how or why this happens to me, but nonetheless displays what occurs everyday. Each line is literally a snapshot out the window of a car, that doesn't allow room for the artificial distance between the people in the streets, and the driver. Finally, Carbo wrenches my esophagus (yeah, that deep) with the third portion, as Filipino folks "fought for freedom,/sang songs to each other around bonfires,/made love by candlelight." While the stanza begins in a dictatorial landscape, he ends it with possibility, as he brings it back to the ground level of people who manage to live, love, and fight everyday, even under restrictive conditions.

Carbo's voice unflinchingly identifies and anchors his Filipino identity. He uses it as a tool to communicate the complex lives and stories of the homeland country, and Filipinos in the US. Even the person in "The Bronze Dove" feels compelled to go pay homage to the leaders of the nation, as if these are markers he should know and hold close. Though this could also be because the poems are male-centered, I didn't feel excluded from zeroing in on the piece. Likewise, in the series of poems "Ang Tunay Na Lalaki Stalks the Streets of New York", "Ang Tunay Na Lalaki Is Baffled by Cryptic Messages", and "Ang Tunay Na Lalaki Visits His Favorite Painting", he equally trails the experience of an up-and-coming Filipino actor in New York.

Truthfully, I am gagging at the "PLEASE/MAKE ME TASTE LIKE/A MAN" overall, but also at Carbo's allowing us inside the head of Ang Tunay Na Lalaki, whose identity is shoved up against a reflection, causing a collision with absurd American advertising that immediately makes you question yourself, and is drenched in sex. The reader can smell and taste everything from the food he's nostalgic for, as well as the musk in his armpits, that surely must show what a "Filipino man taste like to American women". The poem ends rooted in his body, the grotesque things we all (sub)consciously do to prove a point to ourselves, but nonetheless creates a tone of pride and acceptance for going after his passion. I'll be honest, the end reminded me of the Olympics, but I know it was a nod to the Statue of Liberty.

Overall, I'm in love Carbo's ability to just knock at our brains with his language...for reals!