INTRO:
How does it feel to leave a world that was built over a lifetime? Whether one is a refugee fleeing from war or a yuppie chasing First World opportunities, migration is not just a change in geography. It’s an upheaval that re-maps the terrain of one’s world. As with all cataclysms, one is left to pick up the pieces and cobble them together into a new, handmade life." - Clarissa
By Clarissa Trinidad Gonzalez
Let me build new lives around these fragments
make baroque pearls from shards of war
and rough diamonds from ash of poverty
Let me knit shawls from vivid yarns
and sew heirloom quilts from forest shreds
ribbons of waterfalls
all our tattered finery
Send me an ember of the tropical sun
to start a fire in my new home’s hearth
I will kindle with autumn leaves
and melt my golden comb, broken-toothed
to mint the new coin of the realm.
(Published originally in Variety Crossing: Transcription, 2006)
About the Poet:
Clarissa Trinidad Gonzalez is a Filipina author, poet, essayist, and one-time contributing writer to Woman Today and City Man magazines in the Philippines. She has just finished her debut novel, Celestina’s House, due to be released in September 2024.
Clarissa lives in Toronto.
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