Sister Rosario always told us girls to keep our mouths shut, our knees together,
and our hands clasped around the beads of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Sister Penitencia told us girls to keep the dirty thoughts out of our heads
or else suffer through the agony of ten Hail Marys and five Our Fathers.
Sister Grace extolled the virtues of saving our souls for heaven, our bodies for marriage, and our hearts and minds for the church.”

She remembered all that
as she was bangin’ away on her latest conquest
holding his face to her cushiony breast
She’d looked up and saw
his glow-in-the-dark plastic Jesus
sitting on his drawer
its phosphorescent aura
sayin’ that it bless’t
her act of contrition, conviction, contraception
and all it manifest’d
She who imagined the naked Jesus
coming to life on the cross
heeding the need of her little-girl-lost soul
stepping down and answering
her most personal of prayers
She, this girl with her many affairs
she wasn’t making love.
She was getting laid.
She was sick of being told
that she had to be afraid
that she had to be a good girl
that only putas sleep around
that fornication was a sin
and so was going down
Fed up with denial of the flesh
of the body, of the spirit, of the mind
she was out to reclaim what was rightfully hers
and what was once those of her womankind
"I do unto others
As they have done unto me"
she whispered in his ear
as she used and abused him without any fear of retribution
or confusion, she wanted it all
Her body rediscovered
beautiful, sexy, powerful, raw

	she was creation and 	destruction

	malakas at maganda

	matangkad at matapang

	marunong at matanda.

Her cup runneth over
with the blood of birth
of life everlasting and womanly worth
Once leader, a warrior, a priestess, a queen
A harlot, a virgin, and all inbetween
Hallowed be her names, she claimed
Her identities, her faces,
forgotten to all as the allmighty church
put the women in their places
The pagan pinay, caught in a schism
of church and culture
Now reborn
in a baptism of her jizm
She was fucking her way to salvation
through her body, her blood, her holy spirit
This wasn’t a sin
This was redemption
This was her story, as it was in the beginning
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.

-Trina de Joya "Baptism"
guitar by chet canlas
Rec. 9/30/97@chet's bahay...2100.