Pamulanen

Kaya Ortiz

Pamulanen 

Subanen, n.: burial (from v. memula: to plant) 

bury 

a body planted like a seed. i do not stay to see what grows, but i spend years dreaming of coconut palms. tita ruth sings hymns at the kitchen table, her hand conducting an invisible choir. she tells me the names of people i have never met. i hold my own name in my mouth; sweet rain, i crush it on my tongue, i drink. i resurrect droplets of language in a poem but my thirst grows, unquenchable. what i seek isn’t a word but a voice clear as water. instead there is the gentle thrum of pulse and blood. there is the space between breath and body, enveloping me like the warm dark. i cannot see what is on the other side, but i can hear the harmony of voices, singing. 

plant 

a song rises from the earth. i can’t look away from apu prising’s milky eye, the stories swirling within. her voice moves in me like the beat of a brass gong, like the beginning of language: fingertips pressed to lips / bare feet submerged in the riverbed / tears like saltwater. the sound reverberates; yes, even the hush of the river and the quiet of dawn. this, too, is a ritual. listen – a name gifted. my blood grows roots. time dissolves into the air like smoke curling from the incense coil. there is a space between memory and marrow. there is the sound of something breathing. in the dark embrace of the earth, nothing lost is ever gone. 

Kaya Ortiz is a queer Filipino poet of in/articulate identities and record-keeper of ancient histories. Kaya’s debut poetry collection Past & Parallel Lives won the 2024 Dorothy Hewett Award, and was published by UWAP in 2025. They live and write on unceded Whadjuk Noongar country.