M. CASUMBAL-SALAZAR

Abakaderian Elegy for B. Gigi Miranda

Agitation mapped your route from birth to ash, from

Albany Mohican Munsee Kanien’kehá:ka to Pūpūkea via

Afro-bruja Lenape Canarsie

Breuckelen Brooklyn & St. Pete’s. Your circuits made movements touch, kindled

brown search kindred. In your films we see military

bases abominate species & breed groundrise from Clark to Mākua.

Kasamas chorus for your camera & verse, aware your katalonan spells stylus

deep healing ancestor grooves.

Everyone who knew you knew you were a sister’s sister to the fishbone, your

easy faith anchored in dirt worker dancers, fists to the sky. O, Gi! Omnific Gecko!

Glazey eyed Pablo & Shinji confessed, after your spurning, so what, she be lookin good as they

held up Bar 35 wall, lipped Modelo Negras, watched your waterfall tresses’ wang &

hips’ kubing bounce. Kool Herc is fully senior status but met you on a plane & kept on texting.

I reveled in, & envied, your sexy incandescence.

I wish I’d lingered that July night at Sōn’s, our last before your leaving.

I flaked on your hip hop class too, missing witness to your

loyalty & reverence for the sample, slap bass, slack key. At

least we have Washington D.C. in ’92, before Oʻahu:

lahat ng mga kapatid, Johanna, Grace, Yvonne, giddy running tongues

libidinal post-conference conspiring & all our dead lolas laughed too

lahat ng mga kaluluwa at ninuno na

makatarungan. Our barkada nested geometric in

Michelle’s eskrima. O, Gi! Oblational Gossip! In all that exaltation

mama tell me, were you & Kawal beefing? Oo

nga, ‘no? Akala ko nakita – I swear I peeped you –

no, fuck me. Tsismosa tendencies die hard, girl, pasensya. I know you

never did pay any mind to fuckboy wave hunters. You

nasty tested all those dudes’ affections, all trifling palimpsests of your papa’s

opulent devotion to your ma.

O, Gi! Obdurate Guru! Our ride to die romantic. Of your

perpetual quest for a man supreme, I recant every eye roll.

Perhaps about thirst I wonder, isn’t all

radical desire romantic? When you gather us hushed under

ripe Kaimana moons, settler ankles oceaned, & we ceremony for

racisms’ & rape’s annihilation & war’s death,

really, do we not want impossibly? O, Gi! Oracular Guide!

Story you trained young ones to glow on ʻŌlelo public access

susurrant camcorders hiving,

table breadfruit-heavy! How you

taught us to learn relation from Kanaka ʻŌiwi.

Testify against the build-up.

The profanation of the water.

Unheralded Pinay b-girl & island girl rebel,

Women’sVoicesWomenSpeak instigator,

witness to eruption in Olongapo, Okinawa, Pōhakuloa,

Working Fashionista Swap progenitor, you were

worlding always komunidad.

We know xenia.

We draped you in sampagita & maile.

We sang honey bars, all of us liquid,

when we shook you back into the ocean.

Yet you yarrow our yearning even now.

You shimmer in our phone pics as a lush green orb bouncing Kalua o Māua waves.

You remain our tarot-scented Zumba angel.

M. Casumbal-Salazar’s shanking sampaguita stays prayerful. Find their poetry in Epiphany & Kaleidoscoped, & an essay at Amerasia. Her novella was a Texas Review prize finalist & won Sunspot’s Inception contest. They’ve received support from VONA, Kenyon Review, SAFTA/Lambda, & Minnesota Northwoods. She’s been queer/Pilipinx arts/organizing since Prince toured with The Revolution.