Mestiza ka kasi (an excerpt)
Karla Comanda
The security guard at the pawnshop
next door asks me
as I wait for a cab under
Manila’s oppressive heat:
Ma’am, payong po?
– an umbrella to make me fair,
fairer, the fairest of them all,
the most beautiful fair girl among the fair ones,
fair enough to make me the next Miss Universe –
Naku Kuya, okay lang po.
Sige kayo Ma’am, iitim kayo.
Karla Comanda is a poet, editor, educator, translator, and arts administrator. Her poems have appeared in Contemporary Verse 2, filling station, Poetry Is Dead, and others. Born and raised in the Philippines, she lives and writes on the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.