Breast Series I
Origin
They rose from the surface
of my chest
like unwelcome ant hills.
While I showered
I tried to push them back in
saying a prayer:
Dear God -
I hate these things.
Please don’t let them grow anymore.
Plateau
For two decades
they lived under cotton skin
and bras that were too big.
Hermits in school uniforms
or thrift store finds
I forgot about their existence
except when they came out
to be kissed and caressed
by a boyfriend.
They were like board games
I occasionally took out
to pass time and be amused.
Ant Hills
I saw them as too small
and too low on my torso.
They drooped like rabbit ears.
No longer believing in prayer
I wore a padded bra
under my Thai silk wedding dress.
Waxing
After Costa Rica, my breasts
began growing out of their bras.
Like the moon from new to full
filling up with light.
Breast Series II
First Time
In the hospital room
where my baby sleeps
in a plastic box,
I learn how to use
my breasts. At first
it is like losing my virginity –
my bare breasts feel cold
and shy. I do not know
what to do with our bodies.
I hold her awkwardly on a pillow,
tickle her chin so she opens wide
then aim my breast into her mouth.
There is no pain but warmth
of her skin and wonder:
am I doing this right?
Gold Mine
Strong as flexed muscles
solid as blocks of gold
full as the city reservoir.
They are sun, rain, and earth,
fertile valley feeding my daughter’s
blood, bones, and breath.
I hold her against my chest
watch her double in length,
walk, talk, and feel her way through.
Drip
There is a balance
between breasts –
when one is feeding
the other oozes
with maternal loving,
eager to give.
Either I catch it
and save it for later
or it puddles and drenches
the baby’s shirt.
The Cape
In restaurants, friends’ houses,
bookstores, I feed her
in dark or shaded corners.
Tan cape over my torso,
I unlatch the flap on my
nursing bra or tank,
subtly lift the carefully chosen
shirt, hide the baby and breasts
under layers of cotton.
Even at the Mermaid Parade
where women wear sequins tails
and glitter on their breasts
or paint their bodies red
and breathe fire,
I cover my naked skin.
Supply
At work between classes
I pump milk in a small room
behind a Do Not Enter door.
With one hand I hold the pumps in place,
with the other I turn pages,
type short emails, or eat a sandwich.
After, I store the milk in the fridge,
rinse out the parts in the bathroom,
then feed children sonnets and Socrates.
Breast Series III
Harvest
She is fifteen months
can break off bread
with her own teeth,
drink with her own hands,
pick up peas with her fingers,
eat from soil’s bounty.
She can taste with her own tongue,
no longer needs me to be
her metaphor for nourishment.
I am harvested.
Pasture
I am keeping my breasts hidden –
even when she says “ilk, ilk”
and pulls on my shirt.
Instead I hold her close
and give her a bottle
of another mammal’s milk.
As she holds the bottle
between her palms,
she pinches the skin on my belly.
Never again will she look up
from my breast, say “good”,
and continue suckling.
Overripe
Like two swollen summer fruit
I squeeze out their juice
watch it disappear in the heat.
Every day I watch them dwindle
the liquid reduced to droplets
leaving only the skin.
Every day I think:
“what if I nurse her
just one more time?”
Waning
The moon’s round light
is being squeezed out of the sky
diminished to a crest
then to memory.
Breast Series IV
Second Season
In bare-branch November,
my earth is tapped, two wells
begin to fill for another.
First the heat in my hips
melts, breaks me
until a body erupts
spilling cries and fluid
from the narrow gorge of my pelvis
to the pillow of my outer womb.
Only my hungry breasts
quiet his wet wails
and quivering lips.
Song of my Suso
On my bed or rocking chair,
while I sleep or eat
chances are nagsususo ako.
Suso, suso, suso is all I ever hear.
Right when I am going to take a bite
Of my bread, my mother says,
“Umiiyak si Emerson. Pasusohin mo.”
Mid-sentence in a conversation,
my daughter beckons:
“Mom, Emerson wants your suso.”
While I am taking a shower,
my husband calls, “I, I mean Emerson,
wants your suso.”
Between snores, the baby’s wordless cry
pierces through doors and walls,
lifts moon’s curtain from my eyes.
I shuffle to his crib, lift,
carry him to the creaking chair,
and hold him to my suso,
his moon in the night.
Mamma
Too early, I nurse the baby
in bed, slouched, with eyes closed,
curses hammering in my head.
My daughter gallops in
jumps on the bed
with her own baby boy.
He cries: “Wah, wah, wah!”
She lifts up her shirt,
holds his face to her ribs, singing,
“He wants my suso!”
As she bobs and bounces beside me,
I straighten up and smile.
Side by side, we feel the tug
Of need and love,
Our mammal roots.
Three Moons
Walking along a disappearing path,
the sea caresses me with warm fingers.
I breathe in the depth of cielo and estrellas.
Somewhere in this celestial mind
I reach horizons.
This is the nightscape – el nacimiento
of language, ang balík sa simulâ where I can look up
and say: Sana ngayón ay ang kalibúgan ng buwán,
and be laughed at.
“Anó sinábe mo?”
I wanted to say I wish the moon were full.
Instead, I said I lust for the moon.
But that’s also true. I do lust
for ang kabilógan ng buwán,
the full moon, la luna llena,
three satellites holding me together
gravity and tides
silver spheres
navigating my passages.
My Mother Cooks Pancit
She crushes cloves of garlic in a marble mortar
as if they were the cells spreading in my father’s throat.
Flame pulses beneath the wok.
She pours in oil, tests with a few pellets of her sweat.
Hot as his fever, the yellow liquid crackles, spits.
She stirs in roots, carrots, string beans and shrimp.
Green and orange scents color father’s frailness
(drain full of hair, days of chemo).
With kalamansi juice, patis, salt,
she seasons our sorrows, awakens our palates.
Rice noodles seeped in wooden bowl of jasmine water,
translucent, soft, drained then mixed in.
Her tenderness rises into the light,
thin white threads steaming into lace.
Kaen na she calls.
Stairs creak, slippers shuffle. We sit around the table,
eat to the hymn of silver forks and porcelain bowls.
Each forkful a surge of flavor:
my mother’s faithful hands.
Arroz Caldo
In my left arm, I am holding a hundred degree,
coughing child, head leaning against my shoulder.
In my right hand, steel knife
roughly cuts organic garlic, onion, and ginger.
Pieces scatter on the ground.
I am making my version of arroz caldo,
the rice soup my mother used to make
when we were fevered and ill:
golden broth from achuete, lumpy rice,
bite size pieces of tripe and chicken,
scallions, browned garlic, and lemon juice for garnish.
Now I am the mother in the kitchen.
Oil and salt, I sizzle the roots in wok.
I stir with wooden spoon,
adjust the child on my hip.
Add short grain brown rice,
firm tofu broken up with my right hand,
quarts of water and un-chicken bouillon cubes.
Cover. Simmer for an hour.
***
While we wait to eat,
sit in recliner in the living room,
Jazzy leaning against my torso
still in the arc of my left arm,
our legs under a black, tasseled Navajo blanket.
On the screen, two fish inside the cavernous mouth of the whale
hang on the cliff of its tongue:
-It’s time to let go
-How do you know something bad isn’t going to happen?
With trust and instinct, they let fall
into quaking pit, not knowing
if they will be food or free.
Outside the pot, the hallway, the windows, this chair,
inside our shifting bodies, there will be times
when we are swallowed. For now,
the scent and softening of simmering rice
and the certainty of this stew.
Motherless Christmas
On Christmas with my mother in ‘Pinas
the lights are dim, the kitchen is empty,
and no grain of rice, noodle, or lumpia
to taste. In the fridge, moldy adobo
in plastic quarts, tomatoes festering,
piles of pigs’ feet, bacon, hard loaf of bread.
It’s just a treeless, wreathless, giftless day.
Empty, carpeted space is our shrine.
Nativity scene hidden in garage
while evergreens whip against shutters, bring
wind in. Instead we abandon the house,
eat out: asados, maduros, rice, beans
make us quietly crave her steaming plates
that warm us like round, fresh lumpia wrappers.
Neglectful Gardener
Though the seeds I’ve sown in paper squares
Never flourished into fruit-bearing plants
And the potted begonia from the
Teacher-appreciation lunch is now
A seer, brown-edged casualty of my
Neglect, I have managed to boil many
Boxes of Annie’s macaroni shells
Turning white dust into a creamy sauce,
A meal my daughter devours with hands.
Even though the last sprig of cilantro
In the wooden herb box succumbed to weeds,
My son can worm around on his belly
Climb onto my lap and pull up my shirt
To harvest the fruit that keeps him growing.
