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ESL or You Weren't Here. Aldrin Valdez
Читать онлайн.Название ESL or You Weren't Here
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781643620657
Автор произведения Aldrin Valdez
Жанр Зарубежные стихи
Издательство Ingram
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NIGHTBOAT BOOKS
NEW YORK
Copyright © 2018 by Aldrin Valdez
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States
Print ISBN 978-1-937658-86-1
Ebook ISBN 978-1-64362-065-7
Design and typesetting by Margaret Tedesco
Text set in Officina Sans and Sabon
Cover images by Aldrin Valdez
Front, Inside Space (To Jax), 2012, (detail) mixed-media on paper
Back, Inside Space (Child), 2014, (detail) mixed-media on paper
Cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress
Nightboat Books
New York
To Regina Feliciano Valdez
CONTENTS
Mrs. B Tells My Mother I Must Speak Only English at Home
Wearing a skirt on a Sunday afternoon
SHUFFLED SLIDES OF A CHANGING PAINTING
Tagalog
Nanay once joked that when it came time to move to the U.S.
she’d beg the pilot to turn back. Or she’d jump out of the plane
swim back to Manila.
Come back
I pray
langoy
langoy
langoy ka.
Swim with the river.
Sa ilog.
Taga ilog.
From the river.
Tagalog: People of the River.
Nanay
emerges from the water, cursing
the trash and tae floating all around her, clinging to her ill-fitting dress, something she’d only ever wear to who knows—maybe an embassy, to a stuffy plane full of ‘kanos & balikbayans-to-be.
She twists her hair dry, a gesture her arms have memorized wringing wet fabric ten times as thick down the street from her house where neighbors gossiped over laundry.
She thinks to get on a jeepney, but she doesn’t want to stink up the whole bus with the shitty water drying on her skin and clothes.
PUÑETA!
LECHE!
Tagalog curses feel good on her tongue.
She spits on the earth & begins to walk the many, many miles back to Tondo. She is used to walking.
The skin on her callused heels is a map of broken streets & syllables that fall like rain water on newly paved asphalt