Poem – Randy Gonzales

Selection from When Filipinos Dried Shrimp in Louisiana (1870–1965)

admin — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 19:38:31 +0000

I. Shrimp Drying Platforms
Manila Village Bassa-Bassa
Chung Fat Fifi Island
Camp Dewey Quong Sun
Petit Caillou Clark Cheniere
and more
acres of cypress plank
each built over a low island
each factory and village
each community

starts with fingers strong
and agile enough
to weave seines fine
enough to harvest shrimp

then luggers and labor to stretch nets
down the coast Filipino yes Chinese
Spanish French Italian Croatians
Japanese Mexican African American
Native American Creole
and Cajuns populated
over a hundred platforms
scattered across Barataria Bay

II. Barataria Bay
not a bay but an estuary
framed by abandoned
Mississippi lobes
Lafourche deltas
Des Allemands swamps
to the south Grand Terre
Grand Isle then the Gulf

crustaceans (blue crabs
shrimp) and fish that feed
on them (trout redfish)
abundant alongside
water-loving mammals
(mink otter muskrat)
each seeking optimum
salinity between the Gulf
and fresh to brackish marshes

III. Filipino Villages (1880s–1940s)
Quintin
de la Cruz
built stilted shelters
over oyster beds
called them
Manila Village
more Filipino villages
would follow
Clark Cheniere
more
Cabinash
Clubhouse
Camp Dewey . . .

at the height of the shrimp-
drying industry each sustainable
island etched with stilted shanties
bachelor bunkhouses
dwellings for families

bustling community
in a livable wetland
rain for drinking water
no problem with food

you could fish out
your front door
lots of shrimp
you had deer rabbit
prairie hens greens
grown in raised gardens
rice for a jambalaya

enough to share
sail over for a sinigang
go from one platform
community to another

everything you needed
right there and if not
sternwheelers brought
regular freight
and passage through
interior bayous
to and from NOLA

First three sections of twenty-two from “When Filipinos Dried Shrimp in Louisiana (1870–1965)” in Settling St. Malo.

Do-bo

admin — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 19:01:47 +0000

adobo which we called “do-bo”
was the other Filipino dish
used to mix up our Sunday routine
of roast pork or beef with mashed potatoes
usually a pork adobo cubed from a pork roast
perhaps a last-minute decision
substitute rice for potatoes
cook the pork into a vinegary stew
sometimes mixed with chicken
but only after chicken was sold without bones
most of the ingredients of a cookbook recipe
meat vinegar soy sauce garlic bay leaf black peppercorns and sometimes ginger
a bag of crab boil with coriander and mustard seeds whole
all spice cayenne and dill released into the pot
so the spice berries and seeds cooked into the sauce
you couldn’t identify them
until an intense burst of flavor
disrupted the fragile balance of salt and tang
too much for my young palate
not sure who determined adobo
needed Louisiana ingredients
now we use Lola’s recipe with the sweet
addition of a spoon or two of cane sugar
to adjust for the creativity of our cooks
and the variety of our vinegars

“Do-bo” as it appeared in Settling St. Malo. A version appeared in The Philippine Star, 28 July 2022, and The Ultimate Filipino Adobo: Stories Through the Ages, Claude Tayag, Foreign Service Institute, 2022, 150.

Become

admin — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 18:50:31 +0000

what we are (work
hard) (adaptable)
negotiates with

what we were
(dropout poor) (under-
employed) (dreams
of [___________])

we value where
we know (city
streets) (southern
suburbs) (barrio)
where we went
(fishing village)

wrap presence
(work) (sleep)
(love) (sorrow)

with our needs
(dress you couldn’t afford)
traditions (always open

doors) and comforts
(fresh-baked pandesal)
we don’t forget

we negotiate
what we can be
(labor) (opportunity)
(migrant) (model)
(social construction)

transform (status)
what we came from
(sardines and rice)
(oyster-shelled streets)
(two-stop jeep ride)

anecdotes to shape us
(diligent) (contract
worker) (independent)
position ourselves
(on whose foot)

we (blank stare audience)
(narrative passengers)
can identify (Manilamen)
(American) (Filipino)

(call me [name it])

become what (ancestry)
(heritage) (stereotype)
we were born to be

grasp (culture)
(erasure) (community)
connect when we can
(memory) (history)
(noodle dish we both cook)

become
and become
(secure)
(satisfied)
(unsettled)

“Become” as it appears in Settling St. Malo. A version appeared as “Becoming” in Redactions 20 (2016): 18-19.