JIM PASCUAL AGUSTIN

After Alex Tizon’s article "My Family’s Slave" as regards Eudocia Tomas Pulido 

(The Atlantic, June 2017)

Grandmother, Slave?

her hair, forever in a tight

silver bun to keep from touching

our faces or the food she served

her hand, like father's leather belt
forgotten on the red cement
steps in the rain

her tongue, unable to navigate

the language I spoke, stayed

in the cove of silence

her front teeth, a fence

left unmended after a truck

drove right through years ago

her memories of Ilocos Norte

I never asked, I never knew

the name of the lover

who could have offered her

another life before childbirth,

before war took over

my family, the solitary orbit

of all her remaining

days and nights

I cannot recall celebrating

her birthday even once,

but a scene persists

she is washing the smooth bottom

of my baby sister while chewing
betel nut, humming

Jim Pascual Agustin writes and translates in Filipino and English. He grew up in Manila, the Philippines, during the reign of the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, and moved to South Africa in 1994. His poetry has appeared in Rhino, World Literature Today and Modern Poetry in Translation, among others. His self-translation from the Filipino of “Danica Mae” won the Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation and Multilingual Texts from Lunch Ticket and Antioch University. In South Africa, he has won the DALRO Award for Poetry second prize as well as the Sol Plaatje EU Poetry Award 3rd Prize in 2014 and 2015. Agustin’s eighth collection of poetry, Wings of Smoke, was recently released by The Onslaught Press (Oxford 2017). He is currently working on new manuscripts that contain work criticizing the bloody war on drugs by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte and commenting on socio-political events in his South Africa. Blog: www.matangmanok.wordpress.com.