John Parras

They tie me down beneath the Pacific and say talk but all I can think is that water is water is water. My throat is wider than Niagara Falls. I swallow huts and villages, I swallow big blonde American actresses greedy as sperm whales. Marilyn, my sister. Out in the hills she's cutting ears from wild boars and dropping them into soups across Alay, Batangas, Rizal (talk, they say, but I don't know whether the others are planning to storm the customs house in Lingayen). I am a fish drowning in water, a bird who has forgotten how to fly.

When the American soldier found me in the trench with my thighs blasted he gave me to drink from his own canteen.

Will this water pouring down my throat cure me? Will this Cagayan River in my gut wash clean Hukbalahap sins? They are going to storm the Bataan barracks. We have established our own courthouse in the hills of Pangasinan, and there are rifles and munitions hidden among the Hundred Islands. Oh, Magsaysay, do you drink tonight?

Talk, they say. I stretch my lips tight, baring teeth sharpened on the bones of boar and coconut husks. The water is a lake in my spleen. Against the heady current I gather saliva and spit, then widen my jaw and drink more. My ankles are wells, my feet are creeks, I have become a siren of muddy pools and eddies. I know they will attack the Dagupan garrison when the moon rises over Baguio. Talk they say, but I prefer to drink the bay. I am cured.