Manila

Story ID:	292
Written by:	Tish Valles (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Organization:	The Writing Salon
Story type:	Poem
Location:	Manila Philippines
Year:	2005

Your car window belly bulging
East meets west dreams
Dynasty years of hunger I am joy
Colonized brown and white north
Greed frustrated by royalty blinding laughter
South ally and revolutionary wartime love

Ambition, I am from a pearl
Shanties and rising above
Wartime woe I am from freedom
Tarnished by dynamite
The roars of broken mufflers struggling

Water I am from shimmering power
Coup d’etat and peaceful revolt
Taken freedom I am from
the eyes of a hungry child tapping on
Gloriagate and broken promises made

I am from a place devastated