Poetry: “Thirteen Martyrs” by Raine Bongon
When thinking of your grandparents, what scene arises in the mind? For Raine Bongon, there are two places: “the house with the pomelo tree” and “a farm in nueva ecija / where it always smelled like smoke.” Pomelos and gold are threads which bind together this poem, developed into key symbols Bongon uses to depict familial ties specific to the Filipino diaspora. Those threads stitch together the patchwork quilt of memories of a homeland versus a departure from it, shared versus unshared languages, and “keeping your head down and doing the work” versus rebellion.
Read Bongon’s poetry below.
Thirteen Martyrs
behind the shoemart in cavite
in the house with the pomelo tree,
my lolo spoke to me with a cane,
showed me how to hit the trunk
rustle the leaves i could not reach
and catch the falling fruit with both arms.
we would split the volleyball-sized pomelos,
slurp at pulp until our teeth hit rinds
and say i love you not in english or tagalog
but in garbage bins overflowing with citrus peels
and fingertips wrinkled from dishwashing.
he had stories to tell
and i couldn’t understand any of them
until after he was gone.
he gave me seven titos and titas
burned their backsides with tsinelas
but devoted decades of his life driving a jeepney half-asleep
just to send them to school.
tita emily became a teacher,
tito jhun became a salesman
my dad, kuya breadwinner, was a dancer
dressed as an accountant
who uprooted everything he ever knew
and crossed the pacific to tread land with soil
alien to pomelos.
here, the snow was white
the land was white, the sky was white
yet his skin stayed gold.
in a farm in nueva ecija
where it always smelled like smoke
i watched my lola behead chickens
and dodge water buffalo shit.
she sold lumps of ice to her neighbours
took in stray toddlers
and trusted that the government is taking care of her.
i was so far away from the smell of smoke
when i learned that she was wrong
when i learned that being filipino did not mean
keeping your head down and doing the work
that in our veins runs rebellious blood
tattooed blood
gold-skinned ancestors
who would scoff at our whitening soaps
weep at our americana
beg my dad not to raise me in english
because this poem should be in tagalog
but there’s a reason that it’s not.
when i think about the pomelo tree in cavite
i think about the streets of trece martires
it means thirteen martyrs in tagalog and in spanish
the conquistadors made damn sure of it
my homeland is a patchwork quilt of
colonizers leaving stains in their imperialist wake
and my people turning those stains into art
into jollibees and catholic churches
and karaoke and spamsilog.
we wear our gold skin in ungold cities
and fall like pomelos
far from the trees that bore us.
Raine Bongon
Raine Bongon (She/They) is a Filipina-Canadian writer and musician, the sole lyricist of the Vancouver-based alternative rock band Slowicide. A graduate of Vancouver Film School’s writing program, her work can be found published in Glass Mountain Literary Magazine as well as local art journals and zines. Her work primarily focuses on themes of identity, love and grief, human bodies, the Filipino diaspora, girlhood, Borderline Personality Disorder, and punk rock.
