Samantha Tetangco: 4 Poems
Death Anniversary
When the fog rolls in, we forget
about searching for the right song,
about directions and the path
and time, and how we once drove
with a singular sense of purpose
in a caravan led by his car
down Lake road, that last drive, engines
humming hymns as we followed--
There is silence now on this other side
of funeral, on this other side of grave,
car wheels rolled down, tulle fog
hanging low to the ground, all around us
and in us, only none of us can see,
and for a moment, he’s alive, I tell you.
He’s there in the tangerine peel bursts
hanging in the trees, a color so bright
it breaks loose through the leaves.
In the Kitchen with Ghosts
The dogwood is still flowering beside the pool, and at its edge, the Yorkshire Terrier, before he drowned. My grandmother, still alive, singing, bola-bola, bola-bola, as her hands shape meat. Her Spanish blue eyes are lit with excitement, the same spark of joy my father has as he fries ground beef, tells me he loves making Arroz la Cubano because you can add anything to the meat.
Crackle of grease on skin, onion and garlic, tomato softening, rice hissing as it steams, crack of eggs. Can you add jam?, I tease to a father who is not yet dead while my mother's at the sink, her heart still beating. She frees the chicken from the bone with kitchen shears, drops chicken into bowl, adds soy sauce, olive oil, water, tells how some people add vinegar and bay leaves, but she likes to keep her foods simple. She loosens the garlic skins with a butcher knife, slips peels off cloves like dresses lifted from my head when, as a child, she ushered me to bed. She presses the cloves into the mortar and pestle, and it’s there again, that heavy press of marble on marble on marble.
Another dog, dead before the other, noses the ground for crumbs. Once, before she died, I fed that dog white rice with my bare hands. It stuck to her dry gums. I had to dig it out with my fingers, the flutter of panic like fallen dogwood trees grinding wounds into my teeth.
Dogwood Call
We walk in search of dogwoods.
Alex tells how she used to ride horses
through fields of brown
at the start of spring
how the flowers would blossom
through the monochrome
like the magic we are yearning to see.
I catch sight of them on the drive out
So many blossoms
we're dizzy with their scent.
We pull over the car.
I roll down my window
I let loose a long whistle. Hey ladies, I say—
looking good!
The Sandias Welcome Me Home
She was as I had left her: dry gravel dust,
sun set light,
sage desert,
cactus flowers in full purpled bloom,
and at the center, the same questions:
about home
and forgiveness
and the ability to pass through.
The yipping of coyotes no longer the pack
of rabid beasts. The mountain
no longer distant
and unclimbable.
Rain falling in the distance
like an egg cracking open
onto earth.
At Juan Tabo and Eubank, a cloud angel so large
its wings flash fire
across the sky,
a slice of rainbow raining
onto a labyrinth
I no longer want to greet.
I roll down my window. I snap a picture.
A car drives past.
A man’s voice–
boy really,
boy trying to be man,
boy trying
to be worse than man,
calls out Dumbass.
Calls out, stop taking pictures.
Calls out,
Eyes on the road.
A young woman in the backseat,
her hair long
and blond and loose, laughing.
The sky, a miracle
I didn’t know was possible
to ignore.
Samantha Tetangco is a queer Filipino-American writer and teacher. Her first collection of poetry, Hope You Blend In: Studies in Color & Light, was a finalist for the 2023 National Poetry Series Prize and is forthcoming with Broadstone Books. A multi-genre writer, her writing has appeared in dozens of literary magazines, most notably, The Sun, Tri-Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Zone 3, Gertrude, Foglifter, and Cimarron Review, among others. Sam has an MFA from the University of New Mexico and is a Teaching Professor at the University of California Merced.