MELISSA ROXAS
Geography Lesson
I can show you
the maps
on my body
bruises
the torturers left
these scattered brown things
in a mouth
thick with layers of tongue
sticky keys
and a hung note
each one
a whole country in itself
dark and beloved
with Aeta blood
black pour
red pour
black
dark scabs
on my knees
crack
into a thick brown soup
my nipple
a callous flower
oh
these shiny things
of war
sour breath
of a dark animal
my brittle bones
my brittle beast
do not weep
the maps
on my body
bruises
the torturers left
these scattered brown things
in a mouth
thick with layers of tongue
sticky keys
and a hung note
each one
a whole country in itself
dark and beloved
with Aeta blood
black pour
red pour
black
dark scabs
on my knees
crack
into a thick brown soup
my nipple
a callous flower
oh
these shiny things
of war
sour breath
of a dark animal
my brittle bones
my brittle beast
do not weep
Melissa Roxas was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in Los Angeles, California. She was a PEN USA Rosenthal Emerging Voices and a Kundiman fellow. She has been a human rights activist doing community work in United States and in the Philippines for the past fifteen years. She is a co-founder of Habi Arts. While conducting community health work in the Philippines she was abducted and forcibly disappeared on May 19, 2009 by agents of the Philippine military who also confiscated her unpublished writings and manuscript. She was held in secret detention and tortured for six days. This experience has strengthened her commitment to continue writing for truth and justice—writing poems as evidence of what they wanted to destroy, poems as witness to what happened, and poems to remember those that are still disappeared. For more information, visit www.melissaroxas.com.