A Joke in Two Tongues
I.
There is quiet pressure to speak
English.
A wind touch on your throat,
barely felt.
You walk the line between rude/polite
whenever you open your mouth.
Tongues
have the power to include/exclude
but double-
edged power, for they can turn
it against you; call you rude,
anti-social,
divide a workplace into us/them.
Rudeness
can mark you as other, where variety
of skin color or faith is celebrated,
supposedly.
Now your mouth twists around
words,
accent approaching standard, almost.
Yeah for sure enters your vocabulary.
But kin
is out there. Your words echo
wherever
you walk in this city. You are not alone
and every word exchanged
feeds you.
You make a friend,
a friend
of a friend.
II.
Finding kin is hit/miss in this city.
Whenever
you see someone same-skinned
as you
English is still the bridge you walk
until the question is raised:
Are you
Filipino? Do you speak Tagalog?
The flood
gates open: San ka sa atin? Matagal
ka na dito?* Sometimes, it’s a relief,
an exhale,
and sometimes, it’s another way
to include/
exclude each other. No, you don’t speak
Bikolano, nor Cebuano, nor Ilokano.
All you know is
Filipino, this vernacular
bastard
tongue.
III.
Filipino: slippery with meaning, loaded with
loan words.
Tabloids to trashy romances printed
on cheap
paper meant for the garbage.
An oral and aural map of your wounds.
Always joking,
always a joke, with a punchline:
this tongue
describes
your reality.
You never said
the joke was funny.
Translation: *Where are you from back home? Have you been here long?
Christine Fojas is a Filipino-Canadian hailing from Las Piñas City and currently living in Metro Vancouver. She has a BA in Comparative Literature from University of the Philippines and works as a library technician at Douglas College. A list of her publications can be found at her website. She is also on Twitter as @chrisfojas. She is a regular contributor for Marias at Sampaguitas.
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