ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
THREE POEMS
by Joseph O. Legaspi

Fetching my Father

How did we get here? My father sprawled on the bed, sleeping, dried remnant
of his retching on the side of his mouth. I take off his shirt, pants, socks, my father
a pink newborn with every clothing shed. Calm as a napping infant. I wipe
his face with a damp towel, banishing the offending stain, traveling over the slopes
of his eyes, my eyes, the hill of his nose, my sisters', and the thinning hayfield
of his head. In the sky, the equatorial moon, the largest, brightest moon, bears
witness, its light streaming through the window like angels' dresses. It is a satellite,
I learned that in school last week, this non-light weaver, a massive rock of a reflector,
harnesses light from the sun. Should I give up on the moon? I curl up next to my father,
I am a seahorse, a nautilus, I am the ear's cochlea, and again wait for sleep.

Earlier, the neighbors down the block slaughtered a goat.
The killing commemorated the first birthday of the household's youngest son,
the preparations spilling over to festivities, which boiled over like a witch's cauldron
onto the street. At dusk, strings of electric lights appeared overhead like fireflies,
illuminating the women fanning themselves, and the throng of crimson-faced men,
my father among them, gathered around a long table, gambling and drinking, the air
filled with their boisterous joy. Young boys circled hungrily, sons and brothers,
remoras wishing themselves into sharks or ships. It was a lucrative venture:
the grown-ups loose with their pesos when they asked the boys to make store-runs
for cigarettes, matches, salted cashews. And the men raged with their merriment
into the deepening night as the boys, one by one, fell to their fitful slumber.

Sometime after midnight, I was awakened by my mother, rocking my shoulders.
Please fetch your father, she said, and I walked the empty street leading to him,
my singing, argumentative father. I tugged at his arm, his shirt, mumbled my coaxing;
he shooed me away like a fly; lifted me by my underarms and stood me on the corner,
promising he would go home with me after one last drink. Nearby, the goat's skull,
picked clean, wan as the moon, dangled from a tall fence post, dogs curled underneath it.
Standing up, I drifted in and out of sleep. This was only the beginning; sometimes
my mother will be with me, sometimes I will go alone, and when my brother is older,
he will accompany me, as he will when I buy warm bread in the morning.
When we walked home that first night, my father slung his arm around the wing span
of my back, and I felt his weight on me, dented by the gravity of his intoxication,
his vulnerability, his loneliness, as we wobbled down the road. In the darkness,
I heard the songs of night birds, crickets, frogs, stray cats and dogs, my song.

Midsummer, Los Angeles

Three a.m. In the deep indigo I step out
of the shadowed trenches of the house
onto the street, walking so stealthily
that dogs, puckish in daylight, do not even bark.
In their homes are people who earlier were awake,
driving bumper to bumper; mopping up overflows
at public restrooms; feeding their children their dinner...
At the curb I cross to the other side where a high lamp post
stands, and stroll back. A light turns on
in a nearby kitchen. A person, parched, waking up
from a dream? As I pass the light goes off.
Suddenly, in the distance I hear a crisp clatter,
like heavy castanets. Closer, I see
a young girl on a spotted, grey horse.
We greet with a nod, our eyes hidden
by shadows, the girl surrounded
by stars, the horse, ruddy, cursed by suburban
domesticity, yet still imposing
due to its sheer bestial presence.
I look back, watching animal and rider
turn left at the end of the block and disappear.
Returning to my parents' peach house, the lilacs
sopped with dew, I could be Oberon,
mesmerized by human living.
In a few hours,
the day will come to its dawning,
and the sleepless will tumble into their beds.

A Poem About Apples

It was like the dream was having you.
The orchard spread across the valley,
a shaggy carpet. A basket slung
over my shoulder, I picked
the fruit, fructose-heavy,
sleeping red birds dangling
from skinny branches.
Each tree gasped as I
severed what seemed like
the head of the queen of Washington.
After gathering my share,
I sat leaning on a well,
ate the basketfull until I'm filled
with the mush of chewed apples.
I slept my second sleep,
to wake-up feeling my two
front teeth loosened.
I twiddled them with my tongue,
tapped the tough enamel, swinging them
backward and forward until, like dripping honey,
both fell softly onto my hands,
both brown-speckled, exposed, little peeled apples.
I washed them in bitter water,
they were white again.
Bone-hard, sharp, smooth, I made one
into a pendant suspended from a silver chain,
the other a bracelet around my wrist in gold.
What has this got to do with apples?
Maybe this is about teeth.