JOSEPH LEGASPI

BLOOD THIRST / THE SOW /
THE LITTLE BLACK BIRD / WATERMELON

BLOOD THIRST

1.

My brother and I liked to see each other bleed.
Even with towels around our fists
it took only one solid jab on the nose
to knock my brother
to the floor, blood-splattered.
My sisters and I crouched around him,
my brother teary-eyed, whimpering, ready to explode.
Upstairs, our parents were watching the 1980 U.S. Presidential
election on television. Frantic, my sisters and I stuffed
a towel in his mouth, hushing him, whispering good
boy, good boy, reminding him of our mother's
new bamboo stick, smooth and slender.
When our parents came downstairs, we were quiet
in bed, reading, my brother, clean and sober,
and the towels soaking in detergent
behind banana shrubs by the spigot.

2.

Throughout the years, my brother and I
participated in the blood-letting.
We stepped on
broken glass, sharp stones, fish
bones. Scraped our knees on asphalt,
our wounds infected. Cut ourselves
with tin cans, fishing hooks, knives.
Were scratched by cats and thorns,
bitten by dogs.
Had our fingers burned
by firecrackers on New Year's Day, 1978.
Fought other boys cheating us at cards.
Fell down roofs and flights
of stairs, hurling our bodies
to their toughening.

3.

When he was six, a car ran over
my brother, his mangled body scraped
under the heavy machinery.

(stanza break)

Bruised and with stitches, his right arm
and leg in casts, he had to pee
painfully in a soda bottle,
which I sometimes
held for him, smirking.

4.

My brother got some satisfaction,
years later, that summer when my hands
slipped from husking coconuts and my face lunged
into the upright ax-blade.
Panicked, I ran and hid in a closet, my hands
touched my right cheek, the cut
so deep it was like another mouth
that can tell the story without words.
An hour later, light rushed into the moth-
balled darkness, my brother standing
before the open doors, blood
trickling down my cheek
to my breast, to where soaked
handkerchiefs bundled
on the bamboo floor.

5.

Now, I live in New York City.
I write poetry. I work forty
hours a week, writing
for other people. I see theater
productions on occasion, while
my brother tips cows
with his fraternity brothers in San Jose.
He serves bread and pasta
at a restaurant. He beds women, some
in drunken stupor. I curl up
in bed with a cup of chamomile
and rented dirty movies,
not pushing the play button
until the sirens fade in the distance.

[reverse]

The Sow

Her squeal pierces the silence of the Sabbath;
the air absorbs the resonance,
it hangs over the neighborhood.
Children run into our backyard,
collecting among patches of grass, to witness:
a tusked boar the color of smudged mud
riding on top of my mother's pink sow
tied to a post. She leans against a plank of the house, shrieking.
I imagine her backbone breaking at any second.
The breeders tend from the sidelines.
Occasionally they place batons under the boar's weight
to lift the swine and vary its angle on her.
Around me are children from households
where my siblings and I gather pails of leftovers
to feed to our pigs. We have seen dogs
perform similar acts. We have caught
dragonflies paired like overlapping spheres,
and as time passed, wriggling things appear in ponds.
Neighbors tack signs, and if you stroll at their gates
you'd hear the faint yelping of puppies.
Soon there will be piglets, too.
To feed and to sell.
We watch as the sow bends her front knees,
her wail as much a part of us as the air.


[reverse]

Little Blackbird

Up on a tree across the yard, a raven thrashes,
showering the ground with pine needle rain.
You jolt in delight, speak
your baby-gurgle, point your pale
caterpillar finger at that dark commotion
not unlike a feathery stirring of memories.
In my nesting arms, I carry you as my father perhaps
once carried me and how I've seen
your father hold you, blood
of my blood, my sister's daughter.
I have been gone too long,
traveled distances I myself sometimes cannot bear,
but the sweetness of the first words
and raven sounds which roll from your tongue
has made me remember what I left behind:
somewhere in a timeless place
a boy rides a horse through rice puddles
a boy feeds on the ivory meat of coconuts
a boy suckles on the udders of a carabao
and under a tropical twilight dome fireflies scatter like stars
onto a field where that same boy falls into a deep, silent slumber.
Now, you sleep, little blackbird.
I will chase away the cat, destroyer
of the moth of dreams,
and when you awaken
you will again restore my sight to the threads that bind.

[reverse]

Watermelon

1.

This morning, thirsty from the drain of night’s sleep, I ate a thick slice of sweet watermelon, cold, the kind of cold that could satisfy William Carlos Williams. Forget the coffee, the cream-cheesed bagel and bacon. I admit it: I’m fixated with this fruit, green outside, red on the inside, like Christmas, or my mother painted green, or like the Mexican flag without the eagle and the stripes, but with seeds, which, when sun-dried and salted, become the favorite snack food of Filipinos.

2.

I once told a tale to my younger sister of how I was conceived . Our mother went out for a walk one fine day in April, maybe June, and she walked down this path in the province, dried and brown and worn but teeming with butterflies, and the withered leaves and splinters on the ground crackled under her feet, sounding like wet wood placed on a bonfire. She walked until she stumbled upon a watermelon field where, overcome with thirst and hunger, she picked the largest, fattest one, cracked it open with her slim hand and found me in it. She carried me home and my true story ended. My sister rolled her ten-year-old eyes at me and said, “Mommy had sex with daddy.”

3.

This summer night, I crave the satisfying sweetness of watermelon. I head down to the kitchen and open the ice box, searching, then remembering that my father had eaten it for dinner: there is no more watermelon. All that remains is a plum, burgundy, overripe, bitten, the teeth marks I know belong to my sister.

[reverse]