IMAGO by Joseph O. Legaspi
Cavankerry Press 2007
Reprinted with permission of CavanKerry Press.

Alaska
by Joseph O. Legaspi

That summer back in the desert,
I had grown too big for my family.
In that two-bedroom apartment
which squeezed seven adults
I was one more stone
thrown in a jar filled to the brim
with water.  My college books spilled
out of closets, my pine cone collection piled
up between intersections of furniture,
and my clothes baked in their trunk. 
Nights, I slept on the couch,
often dreaming of birds
and skeletons, skeletal
angels, as my brother turned
his heavy, comatose body
on an air mattress
below me.  That summer
I spent hours cramped
in the bathroom, reading, just
me, Kierkegaard, Faulkner
and Gide.  Life traveled
like a boat
in the middle of a lake.
My mother talked slowly,
my sisters dressed slowly,
the ceiling was too low,
too little room to visit. 
And I was tired of the same
reel of scenes,
of the women gathered
around the table, cutting
bok choy and tripe,
my father asleep, to be
awakened and driven
to work at 10:30 p.m. and me,
slumped on the couch, watching
a documentary on Alaska,
the final frontier
of dog sleds, Eskimos,
and big chunks of ice
splitting away from glaciers,
crashing into the frigid ocean.

From the poetry collection “Imago” by Joseph O. Legaspi (CavanKerry, 2007).

© Joseph O. Legaspi

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