I can hear my uncle muttering in the stillness of his cell.
Badmouthing Aguinaldo. Reciting Marx & Mao.
He has the sharpest tongue in the Philippines.
It's why His Excellency the President hates him
& why his doomed brother
worships him.
I can hear him all the way
from Bloomington
wheedling inside cowry shells
ice buildup in our gutters.
I won't be born for years
but my ears are preternaturally sharp.
The brother drops out of school & joins
the partisans in Antique.
Picks up where he left off—agrarian
politics & explosives.
Or maybe it's his cellmate
who has the deadliest tongue in the Philippines.
But my uncle is alone—
it's the silence I call
his cellmate because he has to give it space,
be wary of its moods.
It's big & oppressive; solitary.
He balls up inside minutes, fissures,
the spoon-dug tunnel of his throat.
Even the shrikes
who're supposed to angle in & give succor
shy away.
He meets me at the terminal
in aviators & a black BMW.
Even I can tell, though I hardly speak
the language—he has the silverest
tongue in the Philippines.
Bus boys, shop girls, investors, bureaucrats, even
the cop he u-turns illegally in front of—
they blush, chuckle, kowtow, make promises
to look out, for example, for his nephew
who has the most leaden tongue in the Philippines.
We meet his friends in the lounge of the Shangri-La:
oysters, live music. He doesn't drink
but talks & grows younger
as he does so.
He's younger even
than I am: he's got the most gifted
tongue in the Philippines. He wins an award & the Palace
invites him to fly out & speak. But he gets up, lashes out
at the President seated behind him:
speaks storm surge, speaks outrage, speaks velocity
& eruption.
Now his words are getting muffled:
the blizzards that give birth to me are whiting out his cell.
He's spellbound. Horrified. Something's finally
gotten his tongue. He can hear
three hundred miles away: the jeep muttering up
to the checkpoint, soldiers placing the faces,
his brother making a break for it
but dropping what he's tucked in his shirt; the explosion
doesn't k** him
but is followed by a sudden report—
a firearm
making more silence
in a dazed & speechless country.