ESL or You Weren't Here. Aldrin Valdez
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Название: ESL or You Weren't Here
Автор: Aldrin Valdez
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Зарубежные стихи
isbn: 9781643620657
isbn:
From the river.
Tagalog: People of the River.
Nanay
emerges from the water, cursing
the trash and tae floating all around her, clinging to her ill-fitting dress, something she’d only ever wear to who knows—maybe an embassy, to a stuffy plane full of ‘kanos & balikbayans-to-be.
She twists her hair dry, a gesture her arms have memorized wringing wet fabric ten times as thick down the street from her house where neighbors gossiped over laundry.
She thinks to get on a jeepney, but she doesn’t want to stink up the whole bus with the shitty water drying on her skin and clothes.
PUÑETA!
LECHE!
Tagalog curses feel good on her tongue.
She spits on the earth & begins to walk the many, many miles back to Tondo. She is used to walking.
The skin on her callused heels is a map of broken streets & syllables that fall like rain water on newly paved asphalt
i sa
da la wa
tat lo
a pat
li ma
a nim
pi to
wa lo
si yam
sam pu
Blue Bakla
isa
Contrary
to what I’ve been made to believe most of my life,
I am notempty.
The air is full of water and someone’s
hand pricks at it with a needle.
The water rushes out.
I panic.
Water is sadness
pulsing
in thick waves, now unstoppable.
I’m scrambling and shouting at other people to run.
All my borders are soaked!
And worse
blue is seeping into yellow.
dalawa
When yellow meets blue
it is a floral duster dress
my grandmother’s body fills in.
But if you were to burrow
into the belly of her dress,
you would find endless layers
of patterned fabric
and no body.
tatlo
My grandmother is my mother.
She is Nanay.
I am a child and I have lost her
at the gate of St. Mary’s Academy in Manila.
The security guard
is a scowl in uniform
berating me:
Your lola has to leave.
Kaylangan niya magtrabaho.
Get inside!
apat
Behind the gate, black & white shapes move swiftly through the halls. The bleached statue of a haughty Virgin Mary in the courtyard punishes a snake under her marble foot. October is Rosary Month. Every morning we kneel on the red tiles, a student leading us in prayer over the loudspeaker.
I seem to alwaysbe quiet.
I am dumb.
The teachers’ befuddled stares confirm it
but I am fine with that.
I don’t want to be so visible in school.
I can’t speak English and reading frustrates me.
I am learning at a slow pace.
Like Maria Makiling
turning
herself
into a mountain.
I am learning to speak
from, alongside
silence, writing
asdrawing :
a curve
in the air,
my head
& name
aloud,
land,
the trees,
my feelings.
lima
The English
language
is Mrs. Modesta’s pockmarked skin and potato nose.
The English
language
is Mrs. Modesta’s electrocuted elocution:
Pleazzzzesit down.
Zzzeee
is for zzzebra.
Manila iz where?
It eeezzz on the island of Luzzzon.
The English
language
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