FilAm poet-leader weaves poetry and health care for the underserved in NYC
Editor’s note:
This poem is part of the book of poems ‘Paranaque to New York City Fifty Poems’ (Buensalido Public Relations Agency, 2023) by Therese R. Rodriguez. Born in Paranaque in Manila, she moved to New York in 1972 to free herself from persecution during the Marcos’ Martial Law regime. Her book was recently launched in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Therese serves as the executive director of the Apicha Community Health Center, a federally qualified health center that provides primary care and special care services to medically underserved and vulnerable communities. It has clinics in Manhattan and Jackson Heights in Queens.
Apicha, says Therese, is a gift of the LGBTQ community to New York, morphing as a local struggle of the disenfranchised persons afflicted with HIV-Aids, nurses, doctors, and community activists who pushed for their rightful place of care and healing. Originally known as the Asian and Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV-AIDS (Apicha), the group lobbied before US Congress to change the word ‘Other’ in government health records of individuals into specific races that abound in the US. Thus, was born the word ‘inclusion’ – to include the ‘others’ into the fabric of American society. She had come a long way since then, her daily doze of energy is hope. “We have to have hope,” she said in our conversation.
Therese is an important part of the inclusion and health care movement of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the US. Her life is a daily celebration of that social consciousness and action. In her quiet ways, she is a source of inspiration and pride for her family, friends, and colleagues. Mihaela Mihai, operations director of Apicha, said Therese is the matriarch of Apicha.
We share this poem in honor of the continuing movement of inclusion in America.
Jackson Heights, from the glass window of the children’s clinic of Apicha.
A Gift for Ages
By Therese R. Rodriguez
Apicha is about purpose.
It is a hand that digs deep into the bowels of the earth.
To extract stone in the rough.
With “A Thousand and One Champions”
Heroes, Sheroes, transheroes
We shape the stone, cutting angles, after next.
In the sunlight the stone breathes life
Releasing the soul from within,
Just like Michaelangelo’s
Writhing, unfinished block of marble
Magnificent, nonetheless, as his glorious David.
With loving arms, Apicha reaches out
Far on the margins and on the edges,
In desolate, desperate places
Bringing battered souls to the lap of a gentle mother earth.
To be reared and nurtured in the beauty of self,
Bathe in the power of one’s own truth.
To grow, to illuminate, explain,
Educate a world on the beauty and brilliance of
Inclusion and matters of the soul
Apicha, passionate as the glaciers that dug rivers, sculpted mountains,
Flooded deltas.
A bedrock upon which compassion is learned.
A stone in the rough to a brilliant gem.
(May 18, 2016. Part of the poet’s closing remarks at Apicha Gala 2016.)
Therese Rodriguez and Mihaela Mihai
Apicha assures a warm reception from the get go.
Youth leaders of the LGBTQ
Proceeds of ‘Paranaque to New York City’ go in as a donation for Apicha https://www.apicha.org/
