Tessie Monique
Dear Child,
I want to describe for you the moment I learned shame, and by that I do not mean guilt. I feel it
still, like a ladybug hitching a ride on the freckle of my forearm or the wind kissing raspberries
on the nape of my neck. Then it was charcoal scalding the cornea, fumes suffocating each pore,
saltwater thrashing against dam walls of the throat. Filipina is feminine of Filipino. It begins
labiodental: brush the lower lip over your newly sprouted incisors. It ends lax mid central: open
your mouth like Britney Spears enjoying a Coke. Mother bore it: coconut milk and ripe
balimbing and packages half-filled with dried mangos. Father softened it: rice cooked in
microwaves and Tagalog with a southern twang. In the fourth grade you seized it—a budding
petal—between your teeth and gnawed.
Dear Child,
I try to find an exact middle but Google Maps says Sorry, we could not calculate directions
from “San Fernando, Pampanga, Philippines” to “Russell Springs, Kentucky 42642.” Which
land? Motherland? Girl in a room of bamboo walls. In a field plowed by water buffalo with soft
eyes, hard back, tired hooves. She rides them through the barrio with girlish joy, humming. Root
crops give blood. Have you bathed in tin tubs of rainwater? She picks a chicken for her birthday
and cuts off its head. In a bowl she scoops gizzard, hands the polished silver. Fatherland? Man
outside of a house swollen with bourbon, stale with shock treatment. Have you smelled the sweet
tea southern air? In the state park sprawling dogwood and maple. Crops are studied and money is
to be made. He washes his car and the cat rides in the passenger seat. He takes a cackling piss on
the side of the road with Johnny and Billy. Cop pulls over, they laugh. It’s memorialized in his
yearbook: damn, wild times. You ride the jeepney with Hello Kitty handkerchief over mouth and
vomit. KFC gives you diarrhea. You try to find an exact middle.
Tessie Monique is a poet, essayist, and social worker currently living in Bellingham, Washington. • Photo by Rhiannon Troutman