Each morning you blitzkrieg the tavern and pineapple conucos, / turn the rivers into arsenic, lock my kin up in sheet metal factories, / committing autopsies on their bodies while they are still alive. /

for hundreds of years  /         i am given     the gestures of freedom  without birds the hush of  mist   / awakening on my bones

Jeanne F. Jalandoni is a New York City-based artist, who works primarily with oil paint and textile. Her work explores visually defining bicultural identity through examining her Filipino heritage and experiences growing up as a 2nd generation American.

for you it was the Nirvana tattoo / etched along your upper-arm in courier new / that dazzled the spiky-haired bassist who’d chirped / you into submission with, girl, you is the highest / yellow thing I ever did see.