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| ANGELO V. SUAREZ |
| juan de la cruz meditates on his idiomatic |
| THE AUTHOR HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THIS POEM. THIS IS POSTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE TRANSLATOR. |
| THIS IS PART OF THE LITERATURA READING SERIES | CLICK HERE TO GO BACK TO LITERATURA |
| juan de la cruz is at a loss.
he can’t make heads or tails of his idiomatic expressions in english, having dropped out of grade school as a kid. nor can he make arms or legs of them, foreheads or buttholes. *** so when he dreamt of his mom instructing him to spill the beans, he really did spill the beans. there was no mistaking it— juan de la cruz at the sidewalk market, sitting sweaty, soggy, somnambulant & sloppy, while the buyers got petulant as they eyed his ware of beans on the road, string beans on the asphalt, the pavement littered with baguio beans. but he didn’t notice that, of course— what with his eyes closed & his palms open, revealing what little money he had earned all day. hardly anything to hide there anyway, since poverty’s a secret this country knows well. *** & just as well, really, nexus to the netherworld this place truly is —cubao at night where street-vendors are alive, —cubao at night where cockfighters are alive, —cubao bathed in moonlight while juan de la cruz comes alive as his frame of mind gets filled with photos of models & stars, a constellation of which now glimmers in his head. & oh! look, there’s cindy kurleto, frozen on a billboard along aurora, across edsa, advertising undies while sporting a sporty new bra. juan de la cruz meditates on this, of course, unmindful of his beans, mindful instead of the pet monkey he keeps inside his pants, which he frees & begins to spank in public. *** nothing so strange about spanking your monkey, especially in a land where women give birth to fish according to tabloid headlines. nothing so strange there, in fact, in a land where a martyr sires a daughter who accuses her balding comedian/mayor/lover of having given her a disease ere pointing a gun at her ere battering her prior to having insufficiently settled a separation case with a previous wife. (radio stations couldn’t talk about anything else, thought juan de la cruz.) nothing so strange here hence in this life in the tropics when a man begins to free his monkey then spank it in public, after which he promptly puts it back. no one understands this flagrant display of violence at all, the way no one understands why it had to rain frogs in that climactic scene in the movie “magnolia”, a film juan de la cruz never got to watch. (anecdote: his entire life he only got to watch annie batungbakal & inday & the golden bibe.) *** so what if it rains cats & dogs instead? no cuddly mammal even comes close to being as disgusting as frogs. or is there? wait now. juan de la cruz contemplates the existence of such a warm-blooded animal. he tortures himself just thinking about it, racks his brain with spoon & fork. but what the fuck is he doing mashing his mind instead of selling pork? meat is where the money is, not beans nor brains. (no one gives much for brains these days.) henceforth, to get to the meat of the matter, he needs to butcher a matter, as one needs to butcher a deer to get to the meat of the deer, which we call venison. it's veal if it’s a calf, or beef if it’s a cow. remember we mentioned pork earlier? no one remembers anything anymore these days either. *** because of the damned tv. too much tv makes memory go poof, go sploof, go puff the magic dragon lived by the sea, & frolicked in the autumn mist in a land that wasn’t cubao. so what now? juan de la cruz can’t eat palitaw all the time while listening to peter, paul, & mary at home. nor can he watch tv, because he doesn’t have a tv. & what does he need one for, anyway? it will only feed his imagination, not his mouth. he is too hungry already, his stomach too empty to even begin to dream. the flashing images will only reveal new worlds to him, the way books do— and he can hardly even read. besides, he might turn into a couch potato. just because he has nothing to eat doesn’t mean he’s willing to be boiled and eaten. or get mashed & be slathered with gravy. *** you see, no one can get anything out of him since he’s gotten really thin, anything at all but gas. but juan de la cruz likes gas, because it’s all that feeds him everyday, is all that passes thru his mouth— or whatever wind just brings with it. & he might as well just swallow soil suspended in midair; he might as well just bite the dust (bite the dust) (bite the dust). This poem is part of the collection that won Third Prize for Poetry in the 2004 Palanca Awards |
| expressions in cubao a few years after the |
| beginning of the new millennium |