Etymon: Idiay
/id·‘jaī/
ᴅᴇғɪɴɪᴛɪᴏɴ:
There, beyond you and me, a million crickets dance a fan dance in the dark bamboo groves. Before dawn, the man wends his way through his flooded field. A frog choir swells deep from the bogland, and from above, a bulbul whistles his clear descant. The man attempts to hum along, but the scale does not register, does not chart against the solfège etched in his memory.
There, beyond you and me, first light dusts a rust orange glow over the man’s rice paddy. Leaning against the stone well, a bucket conjures a wish of its own, to ring like the bronzed temple bell, commanding and holy. The man appears at the well and casts the crying bucket into the depths, its metal rim clanging against the damp walls.
There, beyond you and me, the carabao’s strong jaw and elephantine haunch. A gentleness belies his bullish face, engine of this industry. A bast fiber rope strung through his nostrils. By this rope, the man leads him to the river to bathe. The beast wades in: his heft, his charcoal eyes, his small twitching ears.
There, beyond you and me, the man’s grandmother steps out from a curing shed, her sunken eyes squinting against the rising sun. Even she could not have remembered what the field once knew: the forced quotas, a constant air of suspicion, the threat of a whip. No, that memory was long buried. He helps her bundle cured tobacco leaves to take to market. His eyes meet hers, teary from her smoke.
There, beyond you and me, on a concrete patch the man revs his traysikel, a sputtering rickshaw with a sidecar, enough for two or three: his wife, her brother. The man’s young son always perched right behind him on the backseat, where he would hug onto his work shirt and feel the motor’s sheer force, thunderous and deafening.
There, beyond you and me, a horse-drawn kalesa strides by, creaking and quaint. From his market stall, the man notices a young tourist: his unworked hands, a clean shirt too warm for this heat. He could be his son. The lone tourist comes to admire the umber fans of cured tobacco. Remembering a song from childhood, he asks for sigarilyas, assuming it means tobacco. No, the man shakes his head:—winged beans. You are looking for winged beans.
Etymon: Langit
/‘lä·ŋit/
ᴅᴇғɪɴɪᴛɪᴏɴ:
Who governs this myth
full of sky
langit sky
sangit cry
silvered
I have felt this rain
silver my skin
who governs these myths in the sky
the myths where—
the myths whose
language was native to—
the language whose—
who governs these myths in the sky
in the sky
the sky whose language
the sky whose first language was rain
the sky whose first language was water
the myth whose first utterance was rain
I have felt this rain
patterning
on my tin roof
I have slipped in this rain’s puddle
I have slept in this rain’s puddle
I have cried tears which remind me of this rain
tears
whose body of water came from this rain
tears, my tears then, have sought
to rejoin itself with the sky
Etymon: Dila
/‘ᴅᴇᴇ-lä/
after M. NourbeSe Philip’s poem “Meditations on the Declension of Beauty by the Girl with the Flying Cheek-bones.”
a tongue cut in half / becomes sharper
Öykü Tekten
ᴅᴇғɪɴɪᴛɪᴏɴ:
if not ᴅɪʟᴀ if not my if not my ᴅɪʟᴀ if not from here where if not from here then where are you from where is ᴅɪʟᴀ from beneath ᴅɪʟᴀ I found — buried what can be called ᴅɪʟᴀ unburied ᴅɪʟᴀ from ᴅɪʟᴀ ᴅɪʟᴀ hiding from ᴅɪʟᴀ hiding ᴅɪʟᴀ what else, what more | to lick tongue, as in lumber to kiss, lick to tell a story, a fib tongue, to lick tongue snake fangs to mock tongue to taunt arrowhead houndstongue the spirit tongue plant which wards off evil tongue, bolt of lightning flame, blaze to lick, to lap tongue drywood mushroom lamp of the shadow-puppeteer to illuminate to lick, taste prickly pear, tiger tongue the needle of a scale for weighing |
ᴜsᴀɢᴇ; ᴏʀɪɢɪɴ:
when the ᴅɪʟᴀ dila
fractured upon híla
the shore
did it find new dilaʔ
meaning
jelap
hulaʔ
shila
dila
lela
lera
dila
rilam
dèlah
what meanings loosened
from drifting continents lila
what hesitant
breakage dila
inflections become ancient lera
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Aldric Ulep is an Ilokano American writer from Hawai‘i whose poems have appeared in Bamboo Ridge, Beloit Poetry Journal, Tinfish Journal, and Zócalo Public Square. His work was nominated for the Best New Poets 2022 anthology and earned an honorable mention in Southern Collective Experience’s 2021 Asian American Poetry Chapbook contest judged by Lee Herrick. He received his MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop.