Sheila and I spent the night talking about French.
I’ve always thought French to be such a sexy language
and yet how awful my French became as I tried
more and more to woo her with cool Frenchy words –
“voulez vous couches avec fromage sussois”
did not make the hair on the back of her neck
stand like “Kumain ka na. Meron kanin at adobo
dito.” It’s funny, I don’t remember much
Tagalog, I’ve lost it the way sex
transforms a virgin to another Joe Schmoe
in the crowd. And yet Sheila says no, she says
I am still very much Pilipino even if I choose
not to believe it. And she says even a white girl
like her can tell I’m the real thing
by the way her legs grind tight together –
she purrs on the phone
when I speak of browned scrambled eggs and garlic pork,
and how we should clean the toilet,
“Mag linis tayo nang kubeta ngayon,” she finds it sexy
and I’m thinking god, her pale legs are rubbing
together, they are making more heat than we ever did,
I find this out now, when she in Boston,
I find this out now, she was here the whole summer
on my blue bed in my apartment, not once did
our hips meet, and yet now I can count
from isa to tatlong-po, and slowly drag my
vowels, isa, dalawa, tatlo, apat, lima,
anim, and count her sighs and heaves,
and shit goddamn
why did I
forget so much?
I think of my father as I twist these words
for good phone, I remember his black tape player
on his desk. And after he’d been cutting hearts
and livers and tongues from Vienna Sausage
he always brought home these thick
textbooks and every night he would kalong
my brother on his lap, and together they would
learn how to pronounce English correctly.
I would go to bed and see the light underneath
My door, and go to sleep listening to
My father spit his Fs & Ps on the table.
Fair. Few. Finger. Fat. Frogs. Fire.
Pumice. Polka. Pat. Pitted Prunes.
We didn’t have Fs in our alpha bet.
When he’s get confused and say “Fark,” people would laugh,
especially the folks at work, those Polish
and German Americans, they were merciless at
the butcher shop. My father, degreed and educated
in Luzon was just another cow to be punched around,
each day I could tell when he came home
another man made fun of his tongue, it just wouldn’t
go the right way today, or yesterday, or tomorrow.
Few and fine and park and pickle and fieve and fuck,
They were only words but they meant the difference
Between not good and never good enough in America.
And me? Here I am, figuring out how to woo
and woo my love to bed tonight and I bet
if we could, my father and I would slice tongues
and trade in an instant.
Paraphrase: The speaker of the poem is a Filipino American man trying to seduce his significant other by speaking one of the most popular romantic languages, French. Instead, the speaker’s significant other finds the speaker’s native language, Tagalog, more seductive. The last two stanzas of the poem introduce the speaker’s father, who is an immigrant from the Philippines to the United States, and his relationship and struggle with the English language.
Analysis: The fact that the speaker knows English and Tagalog, but is trying to learn French in order to seduce his significant other, perhaps implies that the speaker is trying to “hide” his Filipino side and is trying to fit in with American culture by learning French to woo American women. However, his significant other prefers that he speak Tagalog, therefore the speaker now wishes that he knew more of the language because he is slowly forgetting it.
The last two lines of the poem, “if we could, my father and I would slice tongues / and trade in an instant,” maybe shows that the speaker is taking the fact that he knows how to speak English well for granted and that his father would gladly have his son’s English-speaking skills in order to fit in America. The speaker would like to “trade tongues” with his father so he could be fluent in Tagalog in order to seduce and entice is significant other more sufficiently.
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