"Olongapo City, Philippines – 1972"
Ten till late on Subic Bay
and this bar is shuttering shut.
How many fingers
am I holding up?
Lights out, pitched back
and stumbling drunk.
Up-tempo horny
and there's a chance
my hand will have to do
the dance. Out on the street
it smells of piss
and cooling grills
of monkey meat.
I hear the last
of the bar kept whores
Me love you long time sailor
No go hotel tonight baby.
You come my home, come my home.
I tamp a filterless Old Gold.
She buys a sweating bottle of Coke.
We catch a cab; it carves the mud
through a third world crack
in the garish façade.
Deep into the forbidden blight
where the Shore Patrol
would never go. Fearful
it might be a trap, then
everything just fades to black
in the amnesia night...
________________
________________
A spongy wetness
draws me out
of nowhere.
Grey pigs
grunt their reveille,
pink snouts nudging my toes.
I awake, on a reed mat
in her scavenged hut.
The sunrise makes its way between
sheets of corrugated tin nailed
haphazardly to a wooden frame.
Random street life fills
the large angular gaps.
Down through dusty rays
a silhouette descends.
My last-ditch lover
smiles at me.
A scar; the work
of a pimp's knife
or a machete,
starts above one eye
crosses her nose
through a lip
then wraps her jaw.
Her nanay approaches.
Grinning a mouthful of rotten teeth
she holds out translucent cakes
of purple taro root
and balut [fertilized duck eggs],
cracked so I can see
the fetus curled up inside,
It's an honor.
I feel three pair of eyes,
glossy black marbles
pushed into soft chocolate
faces: her small children
just inches away.
Curious little rags,
tentative but anxious
to see this novelty.
© 2008 Emel.Scott
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