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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