Poetry by Gretchen Filart

      Emma K Alexandra CC




Birthday poem
Countries away, 
imperial armies march on 
toward erasures: lands, babies, 
freedoms, humanity.

All I’ve known is too much violence -
the world’s hands and mine -
that guilt is onion gripping 
my knife fingers when I’m not dying 
a little with those who are.

But perhaps the dead are honored too in small mercies:
freshly caught maya-maya swimming
with valproic in my belly,
a flirty message to a Bumble date,
a forbidden cave, coconut fronds 
singing amid morning’s muteness,
a prayer 22 years after I killed my light.

Thank god the only thing buried today
were my soles in Anda’s hourglass sand.
The only knot I’m tying is my shoes 
sashaying into a room to
wake my daughter. Hey, 
it’s a nice sunny day out.
Let’s go for a dip.

​



An Instagram reel said, “Don’t swallow your grief whole”

Leave some space for dessert.
Let your grief be your cake,
Joy the icing.
Integrate your sorrow into the batter.

I still don’t know how to do it.

Only that grief is a house.
Whenever memory fuels my lamp,
I realize how big my house is.

Joy the hallways
where ghosts of the living I lost
and the dead gather.

But sometimes,
a warm body enters
the door. Pulls
a chair next to me.
Says, “Tell me
how big this house 
feels to you.’

That, too, is joy.

​



​Ars poetica

After Matthew Olzmann


So here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why I still write poetry, despite being an unproductive poet most days: Because even if my marriage went south, I reread Matthew Olzmann’s single-Mountain-Dew love poem and cry white jasmines every time. Because capitalism urges me to “create more content!” but living is art in practice, my mentor said. After living, my heart craves coming home to a clean page. Because light feels sweet and foreign raining from my fingers when I write about my daughter. Because Kim Addonizio is still a hot queen at 70, so is Nikki Giovanni. Half of the best people in my life are female writers. Nevermind that we’re gonna die not famous. Because the men painted my cowrie charcoal with violent hands, but every poem means I am now holding the brush. Because at 19, when I shoved a mountain of pills in my mouth and woke up the next day, in a rage that I’m still breathing, I thought first of writing than calling anyone. I still haven’t dialled, but I kept myself busy with poems than with nooses. Because when I drift off from valproic, I dream about oaring featherlight across an ocean of words.  In the dream, I am telling my mother I don’t have a car, the white coat, a few extra hundreds in my account, but it’s fine – I am still rowing. At the edge of the water my stepdad claps. I can’t get to him, but these words can. Because every day, I look at how vast the ocean is, the mountain of pills smaller in my palm, the way familiar houses grow smaller as you drive away, and I end up saying, yeah, I still want to row.




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​Gretchen Filart is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist from the Philippines. Her confessional pieces draw from love, motherhood, healing, nature, and intersections and have received distinction from phoebe’s Spring Poetry Contest and Navigator’s Travel Writing Competition. Connect with her on Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram, and Tiktok @gretchenfilart, or via her website, gretchenfilart.com. She is usually friendly.