Monsters
TRISTAN SOLOMON
ASWANG
Am I what’s left of ravage and rubble?
An afterthought, given life only in loosely told tales
by tongues that live on lingering memory;
your lola’s warnings of ghosts told by her lola, whose
mouth wrestled with spanish and tagalog both,
one tongue heavier than the other.
All elders who had more to worry about than aswang,
all elders who no longer found themselves in make-believe,
those roots cut and burnt.
To their grandchildren I am a scary story, a creature
targeting open windows and swelling mothers fit for feasting.
I am the leftover, bitter aftertaste of a bygone
Godless people. Ancestors confused, making stories up
to explain the shocking loss of unborn children,
painting me a bat-winged demon with life smeared on my face.
How do I tell them I was/am real? How do I tell them,
that without me, these children would be lost anyway?
And that without me, we wouldn’t have been who we were,
living in the make believe with our heretic Gods,
bleeding the blood of the land, our bodies in tandem with
its seasons, phases of the moon, the way the waves crash
unforgiving and loving against rocks and sand,
same as the winds that could sway nothing
in the resolve of conquerors, their boots treading
from sand to soil to souls, conquest and glory
spitting on our stories.
The friars who squashed towns under the Good Book,
who left the natives left limp
from the weight of each page,
their beings scorned, sin our sole birthright
only they could absolve us from.
Old creatures fading or unbecoming,
gods going into hiding.
I think of my kuya Tikbalang
and his skin shedding with his story.
Before the conquerors changed him, what was he?
What answers can be conjured,
when our descendants have moved on?
And do not mistake forgetting for
neglect, when history lacks room
to mark every word rewritten.
All I know is that I am Aswang,
and that I remain.
You cannot exorcise me from my history,
just as I cannot free myself from yours.
TIKBALANG
The Tikbalang’s body was once carved from its country,
like a root well-nurtured. A wispy nature spirit, its shape
undefined, shimmering with life under the sprawling
arms of Balete trees deep in the forest.
That body is a root that has for centuries been cut,
made into something else, no longer the
innocent umbilical cord being severed –
What does it matter if it was so long ago?
All things eventually lose their tether,
their shape, their sense of self, these things are
always renewed, made better. That’s how
we accept the pain of growth and create new paths
into our futures. Even if these new paths were paved
by the Conquerors' white-knuckled fists dragging
the Tikbalang through the winding curves of his forest,
letting the path bleed him from beneath,
each scrape tearing his skin like paper,
each laugh of theirs louder than his cries.
In this path-making, The Tikbalang thrashed
with the shocking betrayal of his own fragility,
how his wispy body could not steel itself
against cruel hands. Of this struggle,
we must accept cruelty as part of progress,
the necessity to shed fairy tales like
weak skins from our bodies.
When the Conquerors could force nothing more
than his despair, they went elsewhere on their horses,
those strong swift-footed creatures. Out of hatred
for the vessel which held him, his body changed.
Never again would the Tikbalang be caught unaware,
made helpless and small. With the distorted rendering
of a half-horse body and a marred mind, the Tikbalang
had become monstrous, inflicting cruelty towards others.
Still he wanders in the dark wood, mourning a loss he’s
forgotten, fearing always the pain which made him.
Tristan Solomon is based in Sydney and is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing. As a queer person of faith, he explores the complexity of identity and expression in poetry and short stories. He has published poetry in Booker Magazine. His cat Pixie is very silly.
