by nawa Angel A.H.

nawa angel a.h., *visual excerpt from nawa angel a.h.'s forthcoming hybrid-memoir,* WALING-WALING PALPITATIONS. Courtesy of Moonyeka.

Yes, I talk shit.

nawa ANGEL A.H. | Dec 2024 | Issue 40

I was born with blood in the rice
I walked up the rice terraces one thousand times
I fed one million people with my thighs
And when I ate swamp fish they adorned my skin with rainbow scales, now
I stay equal parts salty and fresh
(Duyong)

I reset my nervous system back to pandan fields
back 7 generations
I do not glorify the work,
I grind for the fun of infinity 88
Dayang-Dayang is my nickname

I designed the harvest dances without the Spanish crown
My rice dance makes it rain free hormone therapy,
My sun melts prisons,
My waterfall erodes borders and duplicates time resource so we can feed each other vegan
bibingka, lugaw, eachothers lips and

With my bare hands I made the longest pancit noodle
gave one end of it to sam Choi
and the other end of it to Aries Silk,
Their love has lived the longest life

For our 10-year anniversary present
I gave my spouse a one-way teleportation ticket to their estranged father’s mother’s grave
We found her tomb in the crevice of the sun, slept up in a riverbed
She asked for our wedding bands, then melted the gold back into teeth
into our hard earned smiles

In return my lover took me to Atlantis by seahorse
I made a pact to learn the waterways, and in exchange, all the sex sirens conjured a
sinkhole where the White House is
My rage keeps it gaping

I am the greatest-grandparent of the first child to be born immaculately,
to have each dna
without the harm of a sperm donor
without the harm of a surrogate
without the harm of an adoption agency
I am the old name for fertility: slut.

I am a string-of-pearl which is to say
a pearl found on the beach
that is worn on your son's neck
that is worn in your daughter’s ear
and is pierced through your puso
I am nasty and immodest

as a Princess Grace Awardee,
I kiss-threw the mountain
where Maria Makiling hooked up with me
and turned me into ylang-ylang
To this day we are still friends!

My oldest son is Kinarri
who was buried with our dis-membered dharma
cut a missionary’s throat by
tender hugging the boys shoved in all girl schools
loving kindness is the brand of blush on my son’s skin,Suspension is our last name.

I edged the Snoqualmie River with vigil
for every queer who wasn’t allowed to queer
who wasn’t allowed to wear their gender they wanted to,
for every trans porn performer who glows with video stick,
shines erotic
joy wreck
in post-coital gleam,
in a too soon death sky,
I cry-slime pray-protrude (Apollo Moon)

My Mama didn’t teach me everything
I became the crowned jewel of the Moulin Rouge
where Santo Niño hired me to flog him with cacti,
I am Sin de la Rosa’s birthday present (my favorite incarnate rose),
I wrapped my body in orange fishnet and infinitee’d on Her lap at true church
(Sunday Night Shuga Shaq)

My second best orgasm was filmed on camera for CrashPad,
It replaced Mt. Rushmore with the face cards found in go-go greased mirrors,
My first best puddle-gushed,
replaced the drought in Los Angeles

I am the most adored Aswang
with long nails pierced like a Madonna
holding hands with an escort after a night of doing liberation work with the people we
avoid most, we hate most, who hate us back.
adored enough to bury Mary Magdalene’s afterbirth
to anoint banana leaves in placenta powder to make turon
who loves
you.

My sharpest tooth is gem’d by the Coral Triangle
a prize for floating the archipelago in the sky
away from weekly storms
I fashion myself in ruin
I scrape the smog out my lungs and ask my friend, of the three muses, to spin it into an
upcycled vanishing cloak
to blanket the Aswang elders
to camouflage the many-eyed newborns
before breaking anyone’s bones

I molted my marrow til it bugged out,
I eat the heads of anyone who has ever assaulted me or you
All while being a Diva of Divine Mimicry
I am an insect with style
replanting entire forests in my sleep
(Orchid Mantis)

Yes, I talk shit.
My mouth defecates mirrors of your most glorious self
I sow opal in my eyes for when I wake, I rest
In the mornings, I urinate saffron into lil chalices because my altars
love golden showers

On a road trip to the Andes,
a Jacaranda tree eyed me across a milonga,
grabbed my waist, and asked me to stab my heel in the middle of its root
(Guapita)

I am so otherworldly, even my mistakes make my ass fat
I am so unfathomable, so effervescent, so femme so fatale

Why should I play dead?

nawa angel a.h. (widely known as Moonyeka) is a chimeric creator working across containers of performance, qt nightlife, digital art, experimental media and the divine. They're a settler fluttering between Chumash, Chinook, and Duwamish lands. Within their mixed-diasporic-bakla embodiment, Moonyeka creates experiences of queer erotic joy, animism, Ilocano imagination, and beyond. Their collaborative processes center kapwa, maarte, and kilig as a compass to imagine thriving worlds for their communities.

i was never the siren (2024) is a film re-myth of the Siren archetype; the first installment of their multimedia project 'Harana for the Aswang' realized with House of Kilig collaborators.

nawa draws upon queer and trans performance technologies in their writing, infusing nightlife, states of con-myth-legend, drag, tease, and kink. You can find them frolicking in a spectrum of writing fields such as biomythography, hybrid-wtfness, and the game writing industry. They were recently published with their multiverse of work centering Waling-Waling Orchids in smoke and mold. am i hot enough to kill?, an excerpt of (w)horrific hybrid prose, is featured in The Holy Hour anthology by Working Girls Press. Recent publications include their multiverse of work centering Waling-Waling Orchids in smoke and mold; am i hot enough to kill?, an excerpt of (w)horrific hybrid prose, is featured in The Holy Hour anthology by Working Girls Press.