Adrian De Leon

Return Migration To A Feral Safari

Declaring as a game preserve and wildlife sanctuary a certain parcel of land
of the public domain embraced and situated in the island of Calauit.

—Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Presidential Proclamation No. 1578, s. 1976.

I.

the despots bowed
to tiger kings:

this country’s almost-
royal name, maharlika,

adorned with crowns of debt.
a proclamation followed

its nomos, a briefcase,
America remitted to America.

the king, Imelda’s Noah,
archived her Africa

into his ark. two by two,
Ferdie filled another ship,

Calauit flooded over,
dumped on arid rock.

remember: a clearing
was first a verb.

II.

the plow uproots
for fantasies to seed:

bamboo ravines between
Tagbanwa barrios,

an eagle spirals
the boar, watched from

ferocious water, waking
around the ark, a long blemished

neck cranes above deck,
the giraffe’s inhale, thick as Kenya,

hooves grating unfamiliar steel.
an arrival, a catastrophe,

an affliction: the ship
infects the shore.

III.

our return
is a clearing:

the despots peddle
the horrors they world

atop a grave,
they leper away

the secret-keepers
for the sumptuous

homecoming,
a balikbayan.

the royals euphemize
a crime scene

pamper a prison
a sanctuary

to defer
its revelation:

a zoo is a home
skinned to death.

ADRIAN DE LEON

is a writer and public historian. His most recent works are barangay: an offshore poem (Buckrider Books, 2021) and Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). His two forthcoming books are Balikbayan: A Revenant History of the Filipino Homeland (University of Washington Press, 2023) and Tatay: Notes from a Wayward Son (Doubleday Canada, 2026). Born in Manila and raised in Scarborough, he currently lives in New York, where he teaches U.S. and Philippine histories at New York University.