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From
Ménage à Trois With the 21st Century
xPress(ed), Espoo, Finland 2004
Copyright ©2004 Eileen R. Tabios
Grandmother’s Fable
As Gabriela Pines for Chicken Adobo
I feel I should savor
my childhood measure of a house
where grandmother
gave birth with abundant abandon
where grandmother died
more radiant than a sun’s implosion—
Seashells adorned the sills
for so many windows—
I could feel grandmother’s
disbelief in walls—
Capiz shells introduced
Corot’s “The Origin of the World”
with mica flakes peeling away
as slowly as a vintner’s “bad year”—
A modest interior
refuted jagged angles—
Clouds of cushions
recycled chicken feathers
softening every piece of narra furniture—
Against hand-stitched covers
white lace and silver sequins
collaged together angels
as if they could never fall:
as if a harpsichord could last an eternity—
From this one visit
to grandmother’s house
I choose to immortalize
another woman’s lost history
aided by translucence
and another poet’s “transposition
of birds into daughters”—
Grandmothers stewed chickens
with soy, vinegar, salt and pepper—
I always ate more than one helping
foregoing milk for rice wine
as I prefer my tongue
sodden, thus, fulgent—
I feel I should savor
memory as proof:
Someone shall remember you and me
^TOP^
Copyright ©2005 Carayan Press
