The anatomy of the palace

is translucent, noon light through

the shell. From outside, you could measure

the boundaries from each end of the structure.

Once upon a time, you lived in a false country

between the crystal and the murk of water.

You were ordered to pretend this

was home while they watched.

You fished, gathered branches, built

new huts, dwindled in the cold.

Inside the palace, they assembled

familiar plants to replicate the tropics,

then trapped it beyond reach. You could

see it rorschach on the lake.  

Outside the palace, your lungs

suffered from the winter,

your lack of clothing. What did you do

when no one looked? I wasn’t there.

In my absence, I paraphrase,

I parasite. My imagination

serrated by empire.   

There were failings in their narrative:

you were an immortal people,

movable like breathing figurines

in their limited fantasy.

I can’t lie and say

you were my people,

too. My in the possessive.

You come from the mountains of Luzon,

I come from a province in Panay Island.  

Only you can know what was.

If you were here now—

which would be the first to shatter?  

It matters what we can touch from here.

Curse the cold glass and what it once stored.

Summon the sickening chord.

Note:

Palacio de Cristal was written after a visit to Madrid’s Palacio de Cristal, which was constructed for Exposición General de las Islas Filipinas in 1887, where the Spanish displayed a human zoo of 43 living native Igorot men and women they abducted from the Philippines. The Igorot people were made to live outside the Palacio de Cristal, in makeshift huts mimicking their own, for spectators to watch.

The phrase “sickening chord” is borrowed from Gary Schmidgall’s writing about the last resounding note in Richard Strauss’ opera Salome, from his book Literature as Opera (Oxford University Press, 1977).