Batac
On her first Sunday in Chicago,
her new home, her deathplace,
my mother knew the city would swallow her.
On Sundays in Batac,
when there was nothing to do, she went
to three church services with her sisters for fun.
Batac, her birthplace, her barrio,
“Home of Great Leaders”
and the Marcoses’ hometown.
The story goes Batac got its name
from a man who fell down a hole
and yelled, Bataquennac! Pull me up.
On her first Sunday in Chicago,
her new home, her deathplace,
my mother knew the city would swallow her.
American-Born
I am my mother’s only child
born in America
land of the supposed free.
In the Philippines,
they put her under during labor,
babies magically delivered.
But in America,
in the same month it celebrated
its bicentennial,
they made her work and push
like she was making poo.
She gave me an American name
after a British actress,
except with a Z for extra glamour
and an H to be unique.
I could be president, she said,
because I am American-born.
LG SEBAYAN is a PhD English and creative writing student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where her work was selected for the Creative Writing Faculty Legacy Award for Poetry. A poem of hers also won honorable mention in the 2025 Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) Intro Journals Project literary competition. Her poems have been published in Pleiades, CALYX Journal, and elsewhere.
Midwest Review 