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ALBERT B. CASUGA, a Philippine-born writer, lives in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, where he continues to write poetry, fiction, and criticism after his retirement from teaching and serving as an elected member of his region's school board. He was nominated to the Mississauga Arts Council Literary Awards in 2007. A graduate of the Royal and Pontifical University of St. Thomas (now University of Santo Tomas, Manila. Literature and English, magna cum laude), he taught English and Literature (Criticism, Theory, and Creative Writing) at the Philippines' De La Salle University and San Beda College. He has authored books of poetry, short stories, literary theory and criticism. He has won awards for his works in Canada, the U.S.A., and the Philippines. His latest work, A Theory of Echoes and Other Poems was published February 2009 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House. His fiction and poetry were published by online literary journals Asia Writes and Coastal Poems recently. He was a Fellow at the 1972 Silliman University Writers Workshop, Philippines. As a journalist, he worked with the United Press International and wrote an art column for the defunct Philippines Herald.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

A THING SHE TOOK AWAY: A HAITI FUGUE


A THING SHE TOOK AWAY: TWO POEMS
 

1. FABIANNE GEISMAR, 15 : A DEATH IN HAITI


Shot dead for stealing mirrors.
---Headline, The Toronto Star, Catastrophe in Haiti, Jan 20, 2009, Pg. 19


While the temblor's carrion burn
in common graves unnamed,
you have a name to go by, and
will have confreres wail to mourn
your falling on brittle rubble,
mirror clutched as you would a rag doll
if you had a more innocent childhood,
if you even were a lass in pigtails
or braids or ribbons or princess veils,
and did not have to scrounge for food
or even think that a purloined mirror
is a prize too precious to die for.

O, Fabianne, would you have seen
a flushed reflection of the fairest face
this wounded city has haplessly hidden
in unforgiving debris of shattered grace?
Or would you have recoiled from scars
on scars that faces become inured to
seen through cracks of shattered mirrors?

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

2.  THE MIRROR

When the face looks back at itself/ from the mirror, what does it see? ---From “First One, Then the Other” by Luisa A. Igloria, Via Negativa

  

Was it Fabianne Geismar’s* fantasy, lifting that mirror?
Mirror as loot in temblor-stricken Haiti is fantasy

enough for that crumpled lass on the rubble of Haiti.
Haiti made sure the lass absconded too with enough

bullets in her brain, rending a dream of seeing her face
face itself in a purloined vanity piece pocked with bullets

when retrieved for Wal-Mart from her tight embrace.

Embrace your mirror, girl, a trophy of blooming. When?
When stirrings in your haunches told you what to steal?

Steal the heart of that lad staring at you with shy lust:
lust for love, for all that wreckage allows you to steal

so you can see your mouth that will kiss him, your eyes,
eyes that will shape him in your breasts, your so…

So supple body ripened quickly to life’s urgent quiver.

---ALBERT B. CASUGA

* SHOT DEAD FOR STEALING MIRRORS. Fabianne Geismar, 15, was shot by police pursuing looters.---Headline and Caption, The Toronto Star, Catastrophe in Haiti, Jan 20, 2009, Pg. 19


 

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