Dear Empire [these are your temples]

Dear Empire,

These are your temples. There are rows of stone countenances, pillar after pillar. As if walking through a forest filled with alabaster heads: here, the frown. The gaze. The luminous stare.

Smoke from the incense curls, shapes itself against the archways, rubs against the grooves of the columns. Only a few men press their heads to their hands.

Outside, archeologists excavate a stone torso. Bound in coils of fraying rope, it rises before us, pulled upwards by a backhoe. Its form momentarily hides the sun, though as it sways, the light strikes our eyes. Saying yes. Saying no.

When Benny Agbayani Became a Met

my ancestors rose and cheered.
From their ancient graves,

pairs of arms rose to make the wave.
Every burial site, a stadium and,

for every one of his at-bats
Mayon Volcano spat a puff of smoke

visible for miles. Children in T-shirts
with the number 50, hand-scrawled by Sharpies

Oliver de la Paz

2024

Diaspora Sonnet at the Feeders Before the Freeze

I’m getting cold and the trees have darkened
into a tobacco-colored stain. Birds

cease calling each other—no more ears
in the branches. I haven’t slept for two nights

because their silence skewers everything.
My thoughts cannot be broken. The depths

of my thinking sink me. I hold firm
despite the rain, its dissolution.

There are no sparrows or chickadees, they
no longer fling back their heads, exalted.

Where have they gone? The birds and the finery
of their throats? Their gratitude for seed and suet?

Oliver de la Paz

2023

Diaspora Sonnet Imagining My Father’s Uncertainty and Nothing Else

On condition of anonymity
we are conditioned by antonyms. There,

the thing made—villainous and ill-tempered.
Repulsive. We’re made beasts. Formed from many

scales. How does one love a thing that loves nothing?
Made from the wrack and wreck of you—image

of you, and sent by you to fight your fights,
thus we are all parts and parts. Hibernal

and truant, until your remembrances
have mislaid all the best of you into

us. Tilt our heads, turned this way and that, see
all our old stitching come undone. Our sons—

Oliver de la Paz

2023

Poems

Dear Empire [these are your temples]

More by this poet

When Benny Agbayani Became a Met

Diaspora Sonnet at the Feeders Before the Freeze

Diaspora Sonnet Imagining My Father’s Uncertainty and Nothing Else

Poems

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Dear Empire [these are your temples]

More by this poet

When Benny Agbayani Became a Met

Diaspora Sonnet at the Feeders Before the Freeze

Diaspora Sonnet Imagining My Father’s Uncertainty and Nothing Else

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