Kundiman

Kundiman*

by Angelo R. Lacuesta

after Li Duan’s Chou Yu
after “Mayonaise” by Smashing Pumpkins

His guitar is gutted
With a wounded string,
A G repurposed into D,
Thus a little loosely strung

Like lonely gangs on rum
That run the streets of her town
With nothing but time to swing
The overpracticed strum,

The serenade sung by men,
Smoothened in the hollow chests
And in the arch of mouths made round
But for his sound,

Gut for wound steel, the chorus stung
And swollen into a broken song,
She notes his tongue
And he, the echo of her ear, plucked

Behind the curved wrought iron railing,
Expecting, expecting, expecting.

*serenade