Renee Kalagayan

Don’t get groceries alone—take a blond friend with you.

Don’t answer the door if strange men knock.

Tell them you need a fresh warrant through a peephole or window.

Don’t go out alone—at night or, if you can manage, during the day.

Try braiding your hair, adding highlights, or dying it.

Tell your stylist you need a fresh look, a new cut or color—

blond or red or even purple. Go full MPDG. Copy Cyndi Lauper.

Try lightening your tan, adding highlight to your face, or hiding it.

Maybe use color contacts that aren’t brown—

blue or green or even hazel. Go full goth. Copy Gene Simmons.

Slather on white makeup. Assume the mannerisms of a man.

Maybe use an accent that isn’t yours—

American Southerner, Northerner—as long as it’s American.

Blather white phrases. Assume the mannerisms of a trad wife.

Write fewer poems about your Filipino grandparents

and more about the American South, North—as long as it’s America.

Forget that they moved here to flee a war, became legal citizens.

Write fewer poems about your Filipino grandfather

who worked for the USPS for decades. This land was never his.

Forget that you live here. This is war. You’re no longer a citizen.

Don’t open your car door if strange men walk up,

who work for any US agency. This land is not yours.

Listen, I am telling you to be less of who you are.

My Filipina-American crow-color hair, coarse as kudzu.

My Filipina-American olive tan, my banana skin.

My Filipina-American lips like blood orange gloss.

My Filipina-American thick brows raised like lookouts.

My Filipina-American arms swollen as tilled-up earth.

My Filipina-American legs crossing themselves, devout,

snakelike slender.

My Filipina-American hips, wide tripod stance.

My Filipina-American small stature framed in fear.

My Filipina-American womb, hollow as a spooned-out fig.

My Filipina-American round dumpling face at risk

of being consumed.