Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

All Souls’ Day
Cemetario del Norte, Pagasa
196 ◆ Crab Orchard Review
R. A. Villanueva
Here see the city of makeshift things:
ramshackle balustrades, stopgap pipes,
clotheslines of staples and twine.
What surer proof of the risen Christ
than this tomb-stacked city,
its lungs of bamboo. Gravestone town of scaffolds
and cellophane. Smoke-heft of burnt plastic,
of tin, match-lit ranges of ash. Where bouquets
we once tied to your name, tight
with ribboned silks and rubber bands,
now wilt on their shopfronts, soak
in rainwater and lime. Where blushed with dusts
they tag wintergreen chiclets, pat ricecakes
glazed with syrup, pour Coke
into Ziploc bags all to hawk at the gates.
Lola, how warm their altars are. How their
noon-carved chancels rust in the sun and your
rosary-necked Pietà, narra-husk and polish
brushed smooth by their palms and kisses, rests
as we left it: bathed in novenas, an incense of coughs.