I)
, she said.
because i could fill a cast iron pot with chicken bones
their silken skin wrapped around wild kamote leaves,
divination against hunger –
rice grains softening into clouds, flavouring tepid soup
into starch broth, blood browning to flavour
congee for the colonised.
II)
we always opened the windows
while frying tinapa, which was not often:
the white neighbours might complain
of too much culture,
she said.
& when the old tom, General Macarthur, was dying,
he kept the news to himself,
yearning from room to room,
& ravenous with thirst, he scaled the gingham tablecloth
devouring the tinapa cooling, before
purging the salted fish-flesh on the floor.
III)
in the morning
we covered the earth above the General’s body
with frangipani
which means the dead.
which means do not gift the living
with this milky yellow flesh.
now you know how to live, she said
as though the practice of animal burial
as though a belly of bones and cellulose
means living.
