Table of Contents
Chamoru Poetry Feature Edited by Craig Santos Perez |
Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru originally from the Pacific island of Guahan (Guam), is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-editor of the anthology Chamoru Childhood (Achiote Press 2009), co-star of the poetry album Undercurrent (Hawai'i Dub Machine 2011), and the author of two poetry books: from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008) and from unincorporated territory [saina] (Omnidawn Publishing, 2010), winner of the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Prize. He earned an MFA from the University of San Francisco, a Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship, and is working towards his Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Hawai‘i (Manoa), where he teaches creative writing and Pacific literature. _________
Jay Baza Pascua is an actor, a writer, Chamorro chanter – a storyteller. Jay’s storytelling started with his career in Guam’s media industry. He was an anchor and reporter, he wrote for both of Guam’s newspapers, and was an editor of a business journal. Jay told numerous news stories but a cultural and spiritual awakening sparked his passion for sharing stories of the Chamorro culture and people. His effort garnered publication of his stories and chants. Some of his chants and poems were made into video vignettes. Jay’s chant “Fakmåta” or “Wake Up” was featured at several film festivals.
Chachalåni Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Ginen Pontan na gaige ham guini gi tano-ta. Ma nåhi ham i tataotao-niha! Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Ginen Fa’uma na gaige ham guine gi tano-ta. Ma nåhi ham i lina’lå-ta! Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Puengi yan ha’åni annok i famaguon Pontan yan i che’lu-nihan Fa’uma. Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Gi puengi i pilan i attadok-nihan Pontan … ha li’e i famaguon-niha. Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Gi ha’åni i atdao i attadok-nihan Pontan … ha li’e i famaguon-niha. Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Yanggen gaige i Chamoli Matao taifinakpo i lina’lan Fa’uma. Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Yanggen gaige i tano taifinakpo i lina’lan Pontan. Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Gaige i fegge-ta gi tatalo-nihan Pontan. Na adahi hamyo. Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Munga piniti i tano sa puputi nu Pontan. Na adahi hamyo. Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Munga piniti i taotao-miyu sa puputi nu Fa’uma. Na adahi hamyo. Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu! Tattiyi Fa’uma yan Pontan sa ginen siha na gaige ham guine gi tano-ta. Fa’uma yan Pontan hu gagaogao hamyo chachalåni i famaguon-miyu!
________ Gualo’i i Hale’-mu! A CHamoru chief … a Maga’låhi gathers his clan to plead for their allegiance. He pleads for them to keep their way of life at a time when Europeans used Guåhan to replenish their supplies on their way to the Philippines or Mexico. He is calling for them to not be influenced by “the shine from the metal” and to hold true to their way of life. This chant is a metaphor for CHamoru people to preserve, protect, promote, and perpetuate the CHamoru culture.
Gualo’i i hale’-mu! Taotao-hu … ekongok yu … ti åbmam måtto i gi’lågu ti åbmam maleffa hao i lina’la-mu. Gualo’i i hale’-mu! Taiguini … angocco yu … i lina’la-mu kulang i hale’n i tinanom, yanggen tåya hale’ måtai i tinanom. Gualo’i i hale’-mu! I sinangån-mu … i checho’-mu … i manaina-mu … i tano-mu … kao hasso na ini guihi i hale’-mu … ini guihi i lina’la-mu? Gualo’i i hale’-mu! Attan i famaguon-mu … attan i guinaya-mu … yanggen magåhet umaguiya maolek-niha hao mumu. Gualo’i i hale’-mu! Munga ma fatåni i gi’lågu … munga ma tulaika i hinasso-mu … toktok i lina’la-mu, munga ma attan i låmlåm gi lulok. Gualo’i i hale’-mu! Gualo’i i hale’-mu … nu i famaguon-mu … nu i guinaiya-mu … yanggen måtai yu chule i te’lang gi satnot-hu yan lå’la nu i mumu. Gualo’i i hale’-mu! Hu sangåni hao ini … sa yanggen måtai yu munga ma sumeha … munga ma nåhi i gi’lågu i hale’-mu! Gualo’i i hale’-mu! Gualo’i i hale’-mu! Gualo’i i hale’-mu! _________
A Descendant of Matåpang I am a descendant of Matåpang … the most notable chief … the Maga’låhi of Tumhom. Instead of being revered as a great chief … his name in the contemporary Chamorro language now means silly. You see, Father Luis de San Vitores was determined to bring God to the “Indios” of the Pacific. Determined enough he disobeyed Matåpang’s order not to baptize his ailing child ... Matåpang retaliated by killing the missionary priest. It was not that Matåpang defied the missionary’s spiritual relief but that San Vitores defied Matåpang’s cultural belief. In so doing … this legendary chief ignited the flames that started a 30-year war between the Chamorros and the Spanish ... the embers of that fire continue to burn within the hearts of those who want Guam to be free from colonial rule. The blood which runs through my heart and courses through my veins with the little drop of my ancestors’ DNA rages inside of me. Just as lava broke the surface of the ocean millions of years ago in a violent molten and steam explosion to create my home … my thoughts, my soul, my words spill out onto a computer screen, onto paper, onto a canvass of grief searing those who read my message. My inner thoughts are contained under the surface of a faux calm exterior much in the same way swirling ocean currents are hidden beneath warm inviting waters. When at home, sitting in the stillness of the night, with the gualafon or full moon in site, I hear my ancestor’s haunting whisper in the wind as it blows through coconut palm leaves. He questions me … are you letting go of what is rightfully yours? Are you allowing who you are to slip away? So … I answer … “Saina-hu, ahe. Ti bai maleffa.” … “Ancestor, no. I will not forget.” The island warrior inside me loudly leaps from behind i hålom tåno – the silent jungle of emotions as I take my words …yiyok på’tu – sling stones in my hands every time I step upon a stage and hurl it into a crowd … hoping that it pierces the minds of those who hear me. If that is not enough … hu låla’ i sinangan manaina-hu … I use the words of my ancestors … I use it as Matåpang used a tokcha – a human shinbone spear. I thrust with all my might past flesh and bone into the heart, into the soul of those secretly wanting to hear my message. I do not aim to hurt or kill … I act as a kakåna … a shaman … I aim to amte … to cure … with amot … with medicine … cure an illness … an evil aniti … a spirit … that is not from here … matentago … indentured servitude … slavery … continues to threaten i tano-ta … our land. I hold my breath … like an ancestor who held his breath underwater for more than just mere seconds … for more than just mere fun … but to obtain sustenance from the ocean … I wait for sustenance – acknowledgement of my message. It is my survival … it is the survival of all of us who call ourselves Chamorro. However, this illness … is strong … sometimes I wonder if what I do will even help to cure one person … just as many of the kakåna ancestors wondered if they could cure the illnesses brought here by iron clad conquistadors. So … when I am questioned about my beliefs or actions by my very own people … or when asked … “Why are you ‘matåpang’?” … I simply answer … I am not Matåpang … I am his descendant! _________
Biography of Dr. Evelyn Flores Dr. Evelyn Flores teaches Pacific Island Literature at the University of Guam. She writes poetry as one way to examine her life as a Pacific Island woman and indigenous scholar. She has published three children's books based on Guam and completed the genealogy of a Chamoru family central to a crucial event in the Americanization of Guam. Currently, she’s working on two major projects, one, the first comprehensive anthology of indigenous Micronesian literature and the other a book documenting the experiences of Chamoru who risked their lives to protect six American navy men during World War II.
Deal! “Deal!” Pheena says. Pheena, the oldest of us, She’s framed hunched over In those half lights of her louvered windows “You ever play blackjack before? My already serious face “Teach us,” my older sister Rosie whispers rebelliously Pheena was queen “Wanna go look down our cistern?” We stood at the edge on tiptoe That night, I dreamt of monsters crawling out _________ Full Stop NPR is playing. “All the nickels and dimes of your days.” A spray of birds rises from the green grass. A girl A man, grey-headed and portly, walking for his health “That face, that face, that wonderful face it shines it glows all over the place and how I love to watch it change expression.” He can only look so long. “Never will these eyes behold a sight that could replace that face, that face, that face.” _________ Listening to the Anthropologeists on NPR
As they speak Behind the rise and fall of their tenor Their voices rise and fall Only those who have arrived
Listening to the Anthropologeists-Discourse/Intercourse/Of Course/Off Course Listening to the Anthropologeists—Birth/Death The mastery of their talk Listening to the Anthropologeists—Ironies Said:
Listening to the Anthropologists—Spectacle from those with rolled-up She is trying Expectantly you wait to see I’ve heard the mispronounciations
Listening to the Anthropologeists—Talking back
Listening to the Anthropologeists—Los Isles de Ladrones You give me real space Listening to the Anthropologeists—Art as Triumph Art only stands This is the anthropologeists’ victory. Escape through Soaring _________ Military Buildup/Guam Buildup/Talk Buildup
In this frenzied buildup of talk, It’s easy to make wrong seem right To confuse even the most informed among us with “facts” In these looming edifices of converse It’s easy to make pain seem like pleasure To confuse even the most astute among us with “projections” It’s easy to make the lie seem the truth To confound even the most upright with _________ Michael Lujan Bevacqua is an instructor in Guam History and English Composition at the University of Guam. He is a visual artist, an activist and a writer whose poetry has appeared in the anthologies The Space Between: Negotiating Culture, Identity and Place in the Pacific, Storyboard: A Journal of Pacific Imagery and Achote Seeds. He manages numerous websites and blogs, including his personal blog No Rest for the Awake – Minagahet Chamorro, through which he writes about peace, art, race and decolonization and was the official blogger for Guam at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
I HINEMHOM Gi i mas homhom na påtten i puenge Siña un hungok i minilalak i hagga’-ñiha Guihi gi i hale’ yan i hagon siha ni’ muna’chochocho i anti-ta, Si nanå-ta yan Si tatå-ta na gaige giya siha i respuesta. Ginnen i mas homhon na påtten i puengge yan i tano’ _________
Don’t Give the Chamorro a Cigarette Just Yet… In my readings of Guam’s history from the Spanish period to the present day, there always seems to be this one image that captures and dictates my imagining and imagination. When I read our history, I always get this scene of Chamorros, standing before a firing squad, often blindfolded, each with an unlit cigarette in their mouths, just on the edge of non-existence. Go through Spanish accounts and you’ll see discussions about Chamorros by priests and governors as if they don’t exist, or as if they are on the verge of oblivion.Read governors’ reports or medical articles from the American period and you get the same impression, Chamorros are dirty little impure creatures who without America and the English language would just drop dead and cease to be. The intensity of this image became so ingrained in my ideas that I began to think of Guam’s history in terms of Chamorros being given metaphorical cigarettes of death. Questions and scenarios began to pop into my head Did the Spanish introduce tobacco to Guam just to give Chamorros that first whiff of genocide and extinction just before they nearly wiped them out? After those wars, when some sources say all the Chamorro men were dead, and boatloads of Filipinos came to marry Chamorro women, thereby giving eager scholars the best evidence of Chamorro non-existence. Did these Filipinos hand cigarettes to their new brides as wedding gifts? And what about the benevolent Americans who we tend to think of as the liberators of our culture? Did they flick cigarettes at Chamorro farmers as they called them “niggers” or wrote articles that said, without civilizing and the destruction of their culture, they’ll just dissipate from history? Or what about the American desperate, urgent almost pathological need to destroy the Chamorro language? They burnt books, they beat children, they fined people the wages of an entire month if a child so much as uttered a single Chamorro word. Did they force open the mouths of these children, extinguish their sizzling and smoking cigarettes on the tongues of these children, and then demand that they smoke that same cigarette? And how could we ever forget the war? When the Navy abandoned Guam in 1941 to the Japanese, leaving Chamorros the victims of empires and their inevitable conflicts. Did they leave behind crateloads of American brand cigarettes as well as the tune to Uncle Sam Won’t You Please Come Back to Guam? Then there was the bombing, which was so sporadic and so careless it destroyed most of the villages of the island, and left unknown numbers of Chamorros dead, to be remembered as less than collateral damage. Did they drop bomb-loads of cigarettes from planes as they flew overhead? As Marines landed on the beaches and discovered crowds of jubilant Chamorros, and gave eager young boys and girls candy bars, gum, and yes infamous cigarettes, they were often heard to exclaim, “You mean people live here?” or “I can’t believe anyone could have survived that bombing!” And how could we ever forget the post war years. When the military thought it strategically important enough to steal almost every piece of land north of Inalahan. I remember hearing stories about farmers who were forced to give up their lands, or tricked into giving them up, and then died broken tragic deaths with little to offer their children. Their despair nothing more than tears in the pounding, requiem-sounding torrential downpour of war. Did Naval officers, in spotless and neatly pressed uniforms put cigarettes into the mouths of these men, and then their children, their wives, before they stole their land? Even to this day, the extinction agenda is not complete. In articles, in conversations, the discourse on cultural destruction persists. Chamorros themselves have taken up this habit, and begin to doubt their own existences, sometimes puffing the first whiff of death from that last cigarette as they board a Continental flight away from Guam, both in body and spirit. Even I am sometimes offered that final metaphoric smoke. Or by older Chamorros who are tired of GovGuam corruption or buying food for family gatherings, or thinking about how much easier life would be if their parents were in Saint Dominic’s. Or by young Chamorros, some of which have never left Guam, who write poetry about snow in the voice of Brittney Spears and know more about Lord of the Rings Characters than their own grandparents. But everytime the deadly addiction, the extinction affliction is offered. _________ THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE HAOLIFIED You will not be able to ignore it che’lu The revolution will not be televised, nor will it be advertised The revolution will not be televised or editorialized The revolution will not be televised or politicized The revolution will not be televised, not be theorized The revolution will not be televised, not be supersized. The revolution will not be televised, blownback or militarized The revolution will not be televised and will not polarize based on blood or color Cha-mu pumupuni este che’lu Sa’ i revolution ti pau mahaolify _________
Charissa Manibusan Aguonis from the beautiful southern village of Talofofo, Guam. She is a senior at the University of Guam seeking a Bachelor’s Degree in Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences concentrating in, ‘Society, Ethics & Human Behavior. She is also a member of the Ginen I Hila I Maga’ Taotao Siha (From the Tongues of a Noble People) Association; a group whose mission is to perpetuate the CHamoru language and culture through storytelling. She represented Guam as part of the Literary Arts delegation at the 10th Festival of the Pacific Arts held in American Samoa in August 2008.
DISATENTO! (Disrespectful!) Haaaah!? Whut yew set? __________
Unearth
Do not bury these bones in the corners of your mind!
_________
Lehua M. Taitano, a native Chamoru from Yigo, Guahån (Guam), has spent her lifetime residing either in the mountains or by the sea. She is a graduate of The University of Montana’s M.F.A. Creative Writing Program and author of the Merriam-Frontier Award-winning chapbook appalachiapacific. Her first book, A Bell Made of Stones, is forthcoming from TinFish Press. Her poetry, essays, and Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction have appeared in Versal, dislocate, Nano Fiction, and Tinfish Journal, among others. She also has work forthcoming from Witness, USO’s on Freeways: Anthology of Pacific Island Writers in/from the U.S., Micronesia Anthology: Indigenous Writers of Micronesia, and Transpacific Poetics.
from Actions Have mercy on a creature who does not yet know your face. Behind double cabinets the university’s corner curled COUGAR in a jar before I broke Unclassified, he hovering like a Of course one thinks purr the sound One thinks
(∩)
The library
Chordata A period piece, (also PUMA, MOUNTAIN LION)
(∩) We had thoughts,
I have visions of your rest. Yes. Beneath ridge tree cupped in grass. Yes. We’ll splinter the jar, bathe you in creek water— Yes— Wrap you in lightest muslin Yes, and sage— Yes, white sage, yes. And orange star buds and leaves and— Yes. And these words, too, in my griefscrawl?
Stone tumble. _________
from Actions Retrace the Landscape. Where You Have Sieved Earth for Stones or Scent Alone. Walk it if You Are Able. We stalk the patch of grass. Swish and swingle. Tunnels curl between bunches below the breathless hill. We avoid participle, no –ing because it passive-fies, makes a quality of have, not the have itself. I don’t ask permission, though at day’s end it is not as simple as mine notmine. I eye the exposure in berms that speaks bobsled, skeleton. A creature shapes its way. You stab at the vole’s futility, say look at its conspicuousness, its foolish filet of earth, its obvious scramble! It digs with its hands, shares kinship blindness. Trust me. It feels the hem of wind on its back, the lightshaft prick. It senses hawkclaw, coyote stamp. It perseveres in its must. Before you spoke vole, I dubbed the hills behind the house Mouse Trap. Simple drab ignorance. (All scampering is not the same.) What trappings droppings graying can. What censures down mounds to the epicenter shrine, what humming magic transforms fur to fur, scamper to tunnel and dig dig dig. What chimera presto! voilà! transmogrifies mouse to vole? We climb, glean, retrieve some loss across ridge rife, across bone bleach. Look! the double car garage edges the grass. The sink and dip, the rise. I claim it. Mine. As does the dog. She pisses on barbed wire, effulgent gush on twist caught with hair, earth, the ruff of your shirt. We claim all we see, don’t see the dog is dying. Liver the size of a punch. After the sun, in the kitchen—pronunciation, movement, women’s solace. A firm bamboo roll gathering density’s bundle. We dip our fingers in the water bowl for absolution before we press the rice. If I had a cloak I would bundle grasses. Let the fed be continually fed. I want comfort, a deer mattress, a heart stuffed with trample. _________
from Actions
Speak father father father father father father, until the story surfaces of your unravel. algebra always i did it right in the factor field my imitations mingling his carpenter's pencil i swayed and plied while slantways the bucknife thumbjamb sheaves fluttered to graph paper mercurochrome stains a scab his mottled palm conferred little _________
Clarissa Mendiola is a Chamoru woman who was raised in California. Through segmented essays and poetry, her work explores ideas of cultural identity and ethnic purity via memory, myth, oral and written history, and the ways in which all of these things work toward or against the overarching question – what does it mean to be Chamoru? She has an MFA in Writing from California College of Arts and currently lives in San Francisco where she thinks, writes, and dreams about Guahan.
Haggan
every puff of sand perhaps there is no sanctuary for your bony shell slung transference of years and sea my watchful human gaze how to find a circle’s exit at sunrise only the sound of falagu! falagu! ñangu! holding now the metaphor _________
Phone Conversation with Dad what is the word for go run swim
laughing you dig your throat- from some center red chanting at the top _________
Puti Tai Nobio cutting a rose for you today its fat bloom and mediocre beauty i consider instead bougainvillea supported delicacy firm with silk ripened inconspicuous burst of leaf petals your rose love a mouth full of betel darkened buds fashion of preservation the shocked outsider all those rotting descriptions and blackened teeth drawing savage indecency i imagine the rose an imported darling gift of civilized beauty seduced young women measuring their value against its bruised flesh shedding on a window sill
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