2 POEMS BY ELMER OMAR BASCOS PIZO


A Summer Evening In Novaliches
April 4, 1999

At the corner of the sidewalk close to where
I am standing by, somebody is selling tilapia
from the two galvanized tubs already marred
by pin-sized holes caused by advancing rust.
Thin layers of crushed ice spread over their
dead bodies help maintain their freshness even
if only for a little while.

Blinking at times like my eyes, the light coming
from a lone candle jutting-out from the neck of
a 12 ounce 7-Up bottle penetrates through the
dwindling ice, refracts through the slime within
their dark-gray scales, glides through the gloom
within their faces; finally, it settles in their eyes
gawking at some flies working overtime in their
search for better opportunities.

Grabbing their attention, some passers-by, just off
from their jobs in the nearby factories, stop, ask a 
few questions such as: Where these tilapia came
from?  Are they still fresh?  although their pointer
fingers are already poking at the flesh, even parting 
the cheeks to inspect the gills for redness.  To make
sure, some bend over to have a sniff for that tell-tale
smell of a rotting fish.  Satisfied, some haggle for
a better deal: 35 pesos per kilo instead of posted 55;
their mouths already salivating, provoked by the
thought of a steaming broth of sinigang.

But how heartrending it is, I must admit:  the vendor
who is possibly be in her early-twenties, her left hand
swatting away at the flies, her right cradling the
undersized body of an infant whose puckered lips are
struggling to suck up milk flowing in trickles from the
almost worn-out nipple of her exposed breast.
 
 

Charcoal
Asingan, Pangasinan
April 1999
 

The limbs, the forearms, the torsos I amputated last week
from grandfather's diseased guava grove shrouding the bank
of a coiling brook where I used to set my beetle worm baits
among clusters of purple-blooming water hyacinths-  I stacked
them up about six feet high almost the whole day today
near the mouth of an 8 feet x 5 feet x 5 feet rectangular pit.  I
prepared them for burial before the sun will surrender itself to 
the cold grip of darkness.

And it's not a joke:  there are no mourners or flowers or priests
or ceremonies.  Only me, a shovel, a mound of ricehulls and
the occasional chirps of flirting birds.  I will bury them in the pit,
cover them with the hulls, set the hulls on fire, dig them up 
after three days to claim their charred remains which I will sell
to roast some skewered chunks of pork or to straighten up some 
wrinkled clothes.
 

Elmer Omar Bascos Pizo resides in  Ewa Beach, Hawaii.  Several of his poems were published in the 1998 and 1999 issues of the Philippines Free Press.  Three of his poems were also inlcuded in the December 1999, Issue #75 Anthology of the Bamboo Ridge Press.
 
 
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