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Letter to the Deity Who Told Me Arriving Here Is Difficult as Welcome

I love you / even though what I know of exile / living also includes joy.

  • Hari Alluri
  • Herikita
  • June 2023
Art by Herikita
  • Poem
  • Protest

Dear Kabunian, I love you even though you gave your buhay to our bodies, 
even though you shaped us from the soup of earth itself, and faced us 
generous with the ugly in ourselves, even though we need to face it 

just to remember our whole selves. I love you 
even though what I know of exile 
living also includes joy. I love you with 

the demons of myself—is that you too? The way I gawked 
at a frantic little bird trapped between sliding door 
and door, unable to escape 

without my help, because you made me know I almost photo- 
clicked its plight before yanking the screen clean off—
are you like that? Fascinated by our feathers 

being roughed by the places that won’t let our wingspan 
reach its full? Do you mean the half-dull drumbeat of our wings at glass and wire mesh 
is part of our freedom song? Our voice as the sweetness-ache you wish 

we fight for? Is that why you let the Babaylan be fed to crocodiles 
(those beings whose mouth is always saying, “welcome”) 
so some would learn the songs from inside their bellies after being snapped 

by the powerfullest jaw? Is that how powerful you needed your descendants to realize 
healing can be? To be fed to the chasm of your doom and turn that chasm 
bridge—the faith a bangka holds in another shore’s 

existence? Not just to seek the older story but renew 
your sacredness in the after of its loss? Okay, well here you go: 
the ancient symbols of this work, years I couldn’t find them, then 

my god-kids simply made them up. Pens to scraps of paper. Made them up 
while laughing, and they’re true. What do you make of that, beloved
Kabunian? Like clay from two volcanoes silted down by ocean’s edge, 

forged in fire, spirits given breath, by you. What do you make of 
your brand new little teachers? More are on 
the way. It’s fine, dearest Divinity, it’s okay if you cry. 


For and After Apu Adman / After Apollo & Zuleikha / After Ruby Singh

  • crossings divinity embodiment Kabunian migration mythology Philippines

Hari Alluri

Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is author of The Flayed City (Kaya) and chapbooks The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel) and Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page). He is co-editor of We Were Not Alone (Community Building Art Works) and co-founding editor at Locked Horn Press. Recipient of the Vera Manuel Award for Poetry, his grants, fellowships, and residencies include the BC Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, The Capilano Review, Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and others. For recent work, see Apogee, Four Way Review, Marías at Sampaguitas, Michigan Quarterly Review, and—via Split This Rock—Best of the Net 2022.

Herikita

Herikita is the illustrator for Adi's Omens - Between Worlds, Omens - Impossible Homes, and Omens - Reimagined Currencies issues.

‹Also in this Issue›
  • Poem
Letter to the Deity Who Told Me Arriving Here Is Difficult as Welcome

Hari Alluri , Herikita

Do you mean the half-dull drumbeat of our wings at glass and wire mesh / is part of our freedom song?

  • Protest
  • Poem
Fugue in DMZ/Frontera

Franny Choi , Herikita

in the shadow of / the civilian control zone / musk deer make their beds

  • Protest
  • Poem
Solastalgia

Adriana Lisboa , Alison Entrekin , Herikita

we’d say a star from here from this / other dot where fireflies survive

  • Intervention
  • Essay
Finding Zenobia

Farah Abdessamad , Herikita

In recent years, Tunisia has become a main point of departure for migrants and asylum-seekers, a place from which one flees the African continent.

  • Violence

Adi Magazine rehumanizing
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