ISSUE TEN | SPRING 2018
President Trump, thank you for calling, and good evening, it is night over here
Is it too late?
No it’s okay we
don’t sleep much You are not
a person at all
I am
the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we
are
the scourge of
the Filipino nation
is the Philippines
nervous about
rockets and warheads
there’s no telling
Rodrigo? Are we stable or
not stable?
not stable, Mr. President
a
dangerous toy for
all mankind
the
power
has to be
with bombs from the looks of it
We have a lot of firepower We
could
be crazy
Every generation has a mad man—in our generation it’s you
we can
not
remain peaceful a nuclear blast
is good for
a very good relationship
with Florida
actually we are
afraid
On another subject I guess
Rodrigo
If you want to come to the Oval Office, I will love you
come see
me
Seriously come over
the
people of the Philippines
will remain
secret
come see me
Rodrigo
“President Trump, thank you for calling, and good evening, it is night over here” is an erasure of the transcript of the April 29, 2017 call between Donald Trump and the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. As of this writing, Duterte’s war on drug addicts has resulted in over nine thousand extrajudicial killings across the country.
The More Interesting Story
might ostensibly be my white father
in the Philippines a type of ghost
in that ghosts are scary and often white
and often representative of past wrongs
it’s not any fun to think of my father this way
he is kind he is so good to my mother
he brought a sun hat and swim shorts
and he is frightened really as opposed
to frightening the light off of the water
the sun with its vengeance tiny calamansi
in all the drinks this story seems good
I could use the ocean’s depth
to say something about clarity and fear et cetera
there is deep irony in the phrase
“to be thrown into relief”
my flip-flops are full of a sweaty dust
I too attract crowds at the fish market
who has written the best analysis of sympathy
as it relates to kinship that is my family
as a lattice crawling with bougainvillea
meanwhile the fig tree balanced on its tiny trunk
in a pot in every Brooklyn apartment these days
grows huge in the wild and bears clusters of fruit
that could be a shock in its way
as in oh geez the thing I had contained
has a great green life of its own
now I’m the small thing needing watering
now I’m the rock becoming sand at the shore
Kimberly Quiogue Andrews is a poet and literary critic. She is also the author of BETWEEN, winner of the 2017 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Prize from Finishing Line Press. She lives in Maryland and teaches at Washington College, and you can find her on Twitter at @kqandrews.