Craig Santos Perez

A Rainbow After the Massacre

I take my daughter to the park :: boys play

baseball :: girls hopscotch :: parents watch

from beneath trees :: they say this is a normal

Sunday :: hours earlier, 50 people were murdered

at a night club in Orlando, Florida :: the killer

armed with a legal assault rifle :: they say this

is a normal Sunday in America :: a country

where being lesbian, gay, bi, trans, or two-spirit

is deemed abnormal :: where using the bathroom

aligned with your gender is abnormal :: where same

-sex marriage is abnormal :: where being latinx,

black, or muslim is abnormal :: where gun control

is abnormal :: without warning :: grey clouds

empty their rounds of rain :: we seek shelter

in a country where everything normal polices

our families, bodies, desires, and futures ::

where everything normal erects walls between

those we embrace and those we exclude :: the sun

returns :: we continue our games :: yet all I want

is to hug my friends :: feel their pulse :: say

thank you :: for being in our lives :: for showing us

that queer is not against nature, but is nature itself

dancing beyond borders :: singing beyond difference ::

loving beyond hate :: thank you for showing us how fear

can become pride :: how a kiss can become the erotic

language of hope :: I carry my daughter home :: a rainbow

arcs across the valley :: may it touch everywhere into music ::

Dear Marvel Comics

If you ever create a comic book

about Chamorro Superheroes,

begin with an ocean blue splash

page, captioned: “origin story.”

In the center: devils aboard

beastly galleons collide in waves

with islanders on agile canoes.

In the background, a tropical

island on fire; swords and crosses

piercing the trade winds. Turn

the page: draw brown bodies

capsized. Zoom into their wounds,

now infected by a strange disease,

captioned: “Christianity” or “Empire.”

Zoom out: show Chamorros still

breathing and, at the same time,

vanishing. Next page: Chamorros

struggling to control their new

ability to disappear and re-appear.

Don’t call it genocide. Instead,

caption: “As generations passed,

the remaining population learned

to master their powerful magic.”

On the following pages, illustrate

a tier of panels: 1) Chamorros

vanishing into a mission church;

2) Chamorros vanishing into foreign

names and bloodlines; 3) Chamorros

vanishing behind American barbed

wire fences; 4) Chamorros vanishing

into American schools; 5) Chamorro

tongues vanishing into English;

6) Chamorros vanishing into caves

when Japanese warships arrive;

7) Chamorros vanishing into blue

passports; 8) Chamorros vanishing

when hotels and tourists arrive;

9) Chamorros vanishing into military

uniforms; 10) Chamorros vanishing

into cancer, diabetes, and hospitals;

11) Chamorros vanishing into airplanes,

into a distant continent. After, fill

the gutters of every page with red ink.

Now turn to the last page, this page,

draw us, still here because our true

superpower isn’t our vanishing,

but our survival. And isn’t that

something marvelous? 

Before the Flood

O Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio, your mischievous yet angelic face makes climate change much

            less inconvenient to look at.

You were only 26 years old when you chaired Earth Day in 2000 and asked Bill Clinton: “Do

            you think [America] can eventually become a role model?”

That same year, I watched your film, The Beach, and learned that off-grid hippie communes are

            not role models.

When you killed the shark, I cried for the shark.

I read an article about a wild New Year’s eve party you hosted in St. Bart on a rented,

            $400,000-a-week super yacht, named “The Paraffin.”

The word, “paraffin,” refers to a kind of oil derived from shale.

Movie film is derived from petroleum. 

When the once-in-a-millennium flood comes, will Leo’s Yacht replace Noah’s Ark?

Every New Year’s eve, I re-watch the Titanic. This year I interpreted the Titanic as a climate

            change revenge narrative.

The actual Titanic was four times the size of the Paraffin. 

When the rich people drowned, I didn’t cry. Let them drink salt water.

Thank you for raising millions of dollars for the environment at an art auction in which you told

            the attendees; “Bid as if the fate of the planet depended on us.”

I love that your parents hung a Bosch painting above your crib and that you gave a Bosch book

            to Pope Francis.

If Bosch were alive today, he would paint a triptych titled: “The Garden of Celebrity Delights.”

Someday, I want to visit the island off the coast of Belize that you bought to build a sustainable,

            eco-luxury resort and multi-million-dollar estate homes.

The National Geographic rectangle in the right corner of the screen is so distracting.

Rupert Murdoch recently bought National Geographic.

I can’t tell the difference between climate change activism and climate change tourism.

I also can’t tell the difference between this documentary and an advertisement for The Revenant.

How inconvenient that you had to travel to the southern tip of this planet just to film snow!

When you killed the bear, I cried for the bear.

When the white settlers were killed, I didn’t cry. Let them eat dirt.

Is it just me, or are the native extras in the Revenant the same native extras in Before the Flood?

What is the carbon footprint of a Hollywood blockbuster?

If I were to review your documentary, it would read: “The White Savior-Protagonist re-discovers

            his humanity by trying to save the vulnerable species of the earth, who are the perfect

            supporting cast in this inspiring survival drama on the sinking set of the Anthropocene.

            In the end, the White Savior-Protagonist finally wins his first Oscar for Best Actor in a

            Leading Role in the hottest year of recorded history.”

Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamorro from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the author of four collections of poetry and two spoken word albums, and the co-editor of three anthologies of Pacific literature. He teaches creative writing and eco-poetry at the University of Hawaiʻi, Manoa.