Ode to Holy Places
Someday, I’ll bulldoze you. There are no gods
that dream of overpriced lunch. You had me eat bones
in tetanus-swathed playgrounds and expected a rebirth
into caucasian skeletons. I write poems about this
sort of stuff, where the crucifixes are plastic
instead of holy and the teacher is the antichrist.
And because I faced the altar, you showed me
the West except it was made of holes,
shell casings glinting against my future.
You demon: understand that I was enclosed in walls
full of vultures, and I was crying over spilled milk.
You said everything must be beautiful to be saved
but I’ve baptized myself in the mud, my locomotion
scattered all over the place.
There were phantoms hidden in the leathered pews
and the other kids never repented in the dark.
This is why I cycloned everyone’s faith
into the streets where asphalt could make better homes
for prayers. This is why I never showed you
what it meant to jettison a body pulled
from catholicism. Here is everything you wanted me to be.
Here’s to being someone
full of bread.
Self-Portrait as Another Immigrant On Fire
This is where I immolate all my things:
in Tito’s backyard where the snow is pulled from arsonists
and funeral pyres. ICE wishes us dead but isn’t this how I return home anyway?
Charred limbs or a bronchitis diagnosis that look back at us after our lungs turn
malignant inside furnaces. Therefore, say I am dramatic because I am burning
my things. I dream of leaving my spinal fluid in subzero
bodies to preserve the ghosts on my back, the tarmac whispering my
terrestrial name; I watch as its tongue twists into a euphemism.
You, arsonist of monsters, I am here:
crime-lipped and evil. Come light me up.
Come be arbitrary to my blood and burn me
while the sparrows watch, gasoline and all;
ask me if the fire was ever there. Ask me if things
are flammable enough to raise your voice
decibels higher than shotguns. Ask me if the fire was ever there, just
stagnant and dampened. Ask me if I believe in aliens. If I believe in burning.
Jaiden Geolingo is a Pinoy writer based in Georgia, United States and the author of How to Migrate Ghosts (kith books, 2025). His work has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation, the Georgia Council for the Arts, Bennington College, and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, among others. A finalist for the Georgia Poet Laureate’s Prize and a 2025 National YoungArts Winner, his writing appears or is forthcoming in The Poetry Society, Atlanta Magazine, The Shore, and elsewhere. Someday, he will be good at math.