COUP DE GRÀCE

Noel Moratilla

When you bother to come Gorge our parched throats

to our slums, with your dirt
remember to carry & show more pleasure
the hardest & heaviest rifles when we grovel
to jog our memory. at your feet.
Bring some gasoline to singe Should you hear
our unwashed our famished tableau
conscience. babies cry,
Sear our flesh bury a dagger deep
misshapen by into each one’s neck.
bullet holes When they die,
with eyes that never shut. we’ll put them in
paper coffins
When we welcome you brittle as our sanity.
with hands
reeking of slime or grease, The next time we meet
you’ll find us & you find us restless
disgusting speak to us
so have us handcuffed of your visions.
for such impropriety Regale us with
& whisked More promises,
to the nearest prison contrived
or graveyard. images, false
hopes
Show no mercy if when in truth you’re
we forget thinking
to stoop when how to butcher us
asking for charity. even more.
Cut off our fists if
we clench &raise them (Insights, College Faculty Newsletter of St.
in protest. Scholastica’s College Manila, 2013)
Demolish our houses empty
as our stomachs,
with cardboard-thin  "coup de grâce" (literally, a "stroke of grace"
walls or "blow of mercy") originally referred to a mercy
standing in the muck. killing, or the act of putting to death a person or
animal who was severely injured and unlikely to
recover.