Of the hearts of pole dancers
In Manila’s red light district in the seventies
With its neon lights and glitters
That started each day we left for home
From blocks away that was our high school.
Drivers either gawked at the ladies
Heavily made up in skimpy dresses
Enticing every elderly tourist
To get inside the club, at least catch a glimpse
Of the glass bar with gyrating flesh
And poles on which their life depended.
Or drivers shook their heads at the sight
Their tubercular selves in the same plight
Driving Jeepneys at death’s door
Coughing out black smoke that choked
Slaved Manilenians and transients
Turned into Rizal Park residents.
We teen girls were initially shocked
While the boys couldn’t help but blush.
We got used to it through the years
And looked down at our shoes instead.
Later I got to know every pole dancer
As English or Nihongo they tried to master.
In our language school they worked harder
To be the best mail-order bride or Japayuki dancer.
I learned how little they were reading or writing
How much to extended families they were sending
Where no one knew what Hospitality Girls meant
To which they laughed like they’d kept their innocence.
Marrying a foreigner or going abroad meant
Food at the table and to school somebody would be sent
A child or a sibling? It didn’t really matter.
These pole dancers were risk takers.
With their big hearts, sacrifices, selflessness…
Now in my eyes, they were pole dancing angels.
MLJ/24/12/2020
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