Forethought
poetry by Shelby Millarez Meyers
Forethought
The doctor split
my mother’s pregnant husk
and heaved the drupe apart.
I poured out as a milky white stream. A pool
of gata at her swollen feet.
I solidified, fermented
nata de coco.
I began to look solid.
Maayong aga.
Worse than the raccoon that rolled its dying corpse under the trailer,
my mother cooked daing na bangus outside on a hotplate
to protect my American father from the stench.
For breakfast she would squat in dirt
and turn fossil in frying pan.
She fed me words
rolled in jasmine rice
and pressed into bangus.
25 pesos lang!
Speak English, they say.
When she talks,
when she parts her lips and speaks into the phone
I see
tide past her teeth.
The long, strong arms of the paraw sailboats steadying themselves
on the waves,
crashing along the soft palate.
They must rest along the sugary sand when she is quiet.
A fisherman’s song –
salty fish dried on a tin roof
swimming metallic in halved calamansi and soy sauce.
To the God back home –
to the homeless god
nesting in the O of the Hollywood sign.
She prays twice.
Speak English, they say.
Please God, someone give
the child the Heimlich,
she is choking on
fish bones.
She sweats acidic. She spits small seeds like copperhead
BB pellets. A small, foreign machine.
Susmaryjosep, she coughs up blood!
Red and thick like shrimp paste.
She isn’t brown like you, let her have a chance.
They say:
I own your throat
and your collar bones.
Speak English, speak English.
I speak English. She says.
Well then, don’t speak.
Shelby Millarez Meyers
Born in Negros Occidental, Philippines, Shelby Millarez Meyers immigrated to America when she was a young child. She is currently studying Humanities at New College of Florida. You can find her on twitter @ ShelbyMillarez.