Of Toes and Bloodlines: A Poem That Unmasks the Polite Lie of Purity

by Roger B. Rueda, PhD

Let me begin by saying: if you are afraid of mirrors, do not read Jim Pascual Agustin’s Lost Origin Stories. It is not merely a poem. It is an x-ray in verse—one that peels back the decorative myths of race, belonging, and the false comfort of knowing exactly where you come from. This is not a poem for people who still categorize children into neat little census boxes. This is a poem for the borderless.

Agustin, in his typical linguistic precision and psychological grace, opens not with a scream, but with a shrug: “His own children knew close to nothing about his alien origins.” Let me pause there. This line should be taught in every civics class, every visa application desk, and every family dinner where someone asks, “So, what are you, exactly?” These children are not confused—they are simply inheritors of a story that was too complex for public school textbooks and too inconvenient for monocultural pride.

And then—what genius—the poem detours into toes. Not hearts, not blood, but toes. You can almost hear the reader’s mind clenching. “Toes?” Yes, dear reader. Toes that can pick up pens and uncork bottles. Toes that remind us that even the smallest parts of us carry the strange fingerprints of history, biology, and the embarrassing fact that our bodies are never as pure as our flags.

The speaker’s children laugh—until, of course, their own toes betray them. This is the poem’s first emotional ambush. What begins as comedy twists into quiet realization: you are not simply your mother’s child, or your father's shadow. You are an echo of migrations, shipwrecks, unwanted marriages, and exiled royalty you will never meet.

And now the poem grows darker, like a bruise being pressed: “They were both blessed and cursed with skin that was too dark to be white, too light to be black.” This, my friends, is the colonial wound still festering behind every mirror in the tropics. If you do not fit the grayscale of empire, you are exoticized, tokenized, or politely erased. Here, Agustin doesn’t cry foul. He simply shows the children, standing between categories like uninvited guests to someone else’s ancestral banquet.

But he does not leave them powerless. He gives them hair. Hair that grows long and straight, the kind that sparks envy—not from oppressors, but from their descendants. Blonde girls who are “plain”, girls with “tight Afro curls”. This is not mockery. This is anatomy as resistance. The poem dares to say: in a world obsessed with aesthetic codes, even a strand of hair can be a rebellion.

The poem closes not with a flag or an anthem, but with a bloodline dancing in veins. Cold mountains. Equatorial islands. Exiled royalty. All these histories, compressed into skin, hair, and laughter that turned to silence. This final stanza is not decorative—it is diagnostic. These children are not confused. They are fluent in a language their society refuses to hear: hybridity. And in that refusal, society indicts itself.

In summary: Lost Origin Stories is not merely about mixed heritage. It is about the absurdity of racial expectations, the comedy of inheritance, and the violence of categorization. It is a poem that whispers: your DNA is more complicated than your passport. And that, my friends, is the kind of truth poetry was invented to deliver—quietly, cruelly, and with poetic precision.

So, to all the monocultural purists out there, I offer a simple suggestion: Read this poem. Then read your own face. You might find that your blood is not as singular as your opinion.

And to Jim Pascual Agustin—bravo. You have written not a poem, but a lyrical genealogy of defiance. And like those toes, it clings. Long after we’ve finished reading.