VINCE GOTERA

INTRODUCTION:

These poems are from an in-progress novel-in-poems about two aswang (mythical Philippine monsters) in the 1930s who fall in love — Clara, a manananggal vampire, and Santiago, a werebeast who shapeshifts into a huge dog — and try to live like normal people, in plain sight, in the US, where they have migrated to escape people trying to kill them for being aswang. The married couple promise each other they will foreswear aswang ways, in order to protect their newborn son, about whom they worry because they suspect he may also be aswang. During WWII, Santiago joins the service to fight (though really to kill as aswang) while Clara, left behind in San Francisco, wonders about her husband’s motivation.

Aswang Love, a novel-in-poems, is different from a verse novel. The verse novel is, quite simply, an extended narrative written in the poetry genre, broken into poetic lines, such as an epic in earlier literary periods. The novel-in-poems is instead written in established poetic forms; in the case of Aswang Love, such forms as blank verse, concrete poetry (esp. carmina figurata), curtal sonnet, free verse, ghazal, hay(na)ku, pantoum, prose poetry, sestina, sonnet (Shakespearean, Petrarchan, and Pushkin), tanka prose, and terza rima. The poetic forms that comprise Aswang Love are from widespread global poetry traditions — American, Asian, British (in fact, European), Middle Eastern — across several countries. I hope you enjoy these excerpts from Aswang Love.

Excerpts from Aswang Love

Aswang Honeymoon at the Golden Gate

—May 26, 1937

“Isn’t that simply magnificent, Tiyago?” 

Clara pointed above the steamship’s prow

as they sailed under the brand-new bridge, 

its orange towers gleaming in the setting sun.

Tiyago could only nod, speechless at the beauty

of the orange cables shimmering as they swooped

in a graceful arc. Thousands of San Franciscans

had walked across the Golden Gate that day,

a grand feat never before possible. 

Clara and Tiyago hurried but got to the bridge 

too late, almost dark. The next morning, 

at the dedication, people snickered

at the loony old man, the bridge watchman

who swore he’d heard leathery wings wak wak

and saw silhouetted against the moon a bizarre

flying thing, holding a gigantic dog.

“Holding a dog?” Nearby listeners laughed,

pantomiming drinking from a bottle 

behind the poor man’s back. “Crazy drunk,”

they whispered to each other, smirking.

How beautiful it must have been on top 

of the eight-hundred-foot tower nearest

to the glistening lights of San Francisco, 

tiny diamonds strewn on jet black cloth.

The bride’s wings beating slow and soft,

the groom’s canine fur shining sable and sleek,

holding hand and paw in the velvet night,

a thousand stars showering glittery light.

The Crib

     — Clara —

I don’t know how Tiyago got narra wood

here in San Francisco, the national tree

of the Philippines, used in native healing

of tumors. For days now, Tiyago would

get up at the crack of dawn, and plane three-

inch-wide long bars, sawing and hammering

until sunset. Finally, it was done,

a crib for the baby, shipshape boat we three

would sail into the destiny we’re making.

So proud of Tiyago, able now to shun

                              his aswang craving.

     — Santiago —

I know this carpentering makes Clara

happy, thinking I’m finally becoming

human, no longer a shapeshifting aswang.

How can I be anything else? This narra

wood is always narra wood and nothing

can turn it into balsa. I’m just aswang.

For her sake, I pretend I’m not, but I live

for the chase under the hard bright moon, hunting

men. Even with the baby coming, aswang

is all I am. Clara, I give you this crib.

                              But I’m still aswang.

Aswang Christening: A Family Photo

Radiant parents and bouncy baby, all silken

and crinoline, taffeta and three-piece wool,

are posed in this portrait next to the baptismal

font at St. George’s. The baby smells of milk and,

slightly, of turned earth. They name him Malcolm.

The mother, Clara, whispers to herself, she’ll

swear off womb water, that sweet fetal

liquor, now that she’s bearing children.

Santiago, the father, thanks the parish priest

but thinks to himself how plump the man is.

Imagines Father Simon running for his

Life, pale skin glimmering in dim forest.

Behind them, in stained glass, a trick of the light

turns the Holy Ghost—a dove—black, not white.

Son of Aswang

From dawn’s mists at the birth of the world, aswang.

To judgment day’s star-starved midnight, yes, aswang.

Black bird of the heart rises up into the open throat

and back down again, croaking the song of the aswang.

Pitch-dark feathers, tar, bitumen, creosote, obsidian

stone blade chipped into the sharp sword of the aswang.

Bakunawa dragon devouring the deep sky’s silver eye,

dread darkness swallowing then spitting up the aswang.

Santiago and Clara, saintly and lucent, desperate tenebrae,

have borne Malcolm into the light. But will he be aswang?

Baby’s Wings

Clara picked up the baby from his crib,

her little boy, Malcolm, swaddled in a white gown, 

like a cotton cloud or maybe a winding sheet.

His caramel tan face framed by a bib,

Malcolm smiled at her, his hands like brown

starfish in warm sea sand, his little feet

playing peekaboo amid all the white cloth.

She held him up in front of her, and a frown

crossed his face. The gown ripped in the pleats

at his shoulders and out popped wings. A moth’s

                    slow dusky wingbeat.

A Mother’s Warning 

Clara gently rubbed the baby’s forehead,

and as Malcolm’s eyes closed and he drifted

off to sleep, the moth wings on his shoulders

pulled inside till there was no trace except red

creases marking where they had unfolded.

Clara smiled then frowned, thought of him older

and no longer cute. Whenever he would ride

the night wind, soar the sky, they’d send soldiers, 

hunters, to kill him. Clara rubbed at the red 

marks, frantic. That they faded, disappeared,

                                  barely consoled her.

Dogface

—slang for infantryman in WWII

The soldier, a five foot two buck private, 

1st Filipino Infantry Regiment, 

motto “Laging Una” (Always First),

snuck into the woods that full-moon night,

June 1945, island of Samar, Philippines,

his company doing mop-up operations,

rounding up Japanese enemy in the jungles.

Our blisterfoot, alone in the boondocks,

silently stripped off his fatigues and 

stashed them with his dogtags in the bole 

of a tree. Dogtags too noisy for this mission.

A personal mission. Stared up at the moon,

his vision red like bright pulsing arterial blood.

He laid his hands upon the earth and began

to lope through deep jungle on all fours.

Till he came upon a wagon of “canned cows,”

condensed milk in tins. Guarded by another

fighting man, a skinny Japanese ittohei, 

soldier first class, armed with a Type 38 

carbine, not a front-line rifle. His Tokyo 

specs glinted like the bottoms of glass 

bottles planted neck-down into the ground.

Like wind, Santiago leaped from the tree line. 

The imperial soldier knew nothing. Fangs 

ripped out the soldier’s throat, his jugular 

spraying red. Aswang drank full and deep 

the man’s blood, the moon a bronze medal.

Aswang Despair Late at Night

I was awakened suddenly by a bump

in the night, and I turned to embrace

Tiyago but he is gone for now. A fixture

in my life for ten years, gone. A howl

echoing far off is how I think of him. Lonely

for my husband away at war, I resolved

to be stronger. After all he had resolved

to fight for our country — he was no bump

on a log. The two of us have had two lonely

years while he trained. I’ve learned to embrace

this duty he must follow, but in my heart I howl

at the unfairness of life. I’ve fixed your

face in my mind’s eye as a bright fixture

to get me through the days when my resolve

slips. I wonder if, deployed now, you howl,

fighting in the old country, sharp bumps

of bullets and shells loud in your ears. Brace

yourself, mi amor. I know you are lonely.

If it helps, you should know I’m lonely

too. I got out of bed, picked up your picture,

hugged it to my breast, the only embrace

I own now. I started walking our rooms, resolved

to find things connected to you. My foot bumped

the dining table you constructed, and I howled

at the pain in my little toe. My faint howl

helped for a moment, distracting me from lonely

musings. I found another photograph: my baby bump

with you rubbing it jokingly as if to fix it, your

smile so bright, your eyes twinkling, your resolve

to be a good father so clear in your face. I embraced

you that day, I recall. A long, loving embrace

that almost removed the memories of you howling

and me hunting pregnant women. We then resolved

again to give up the aswang ways, no matter how lonely

that would make us, just invisible ordinary fixtures

in the world of humans. I went to Malcolm, sweet bump

of ours, and embraced him. He is our brave fixture

among the others, old prey. Bumped, Malcolm howled

in his sleep. Instantly lonely, I feared for our resolve.

The Last Moments

The moon’s full face beamed down like cold fire

on the thick jungle where Tiyago ran,

giant black canine, paws silent on the ground,

his prey a squad of Nipponese soldiers

on silent patrol. He sprang from dense green

foliage, onyx-muscled arrow sans sound.

But one man saw the movement, fired point blank.

The bullet splintered Tiyago’s collarbone.

Changed back to human, he fell hard, Clara and 

Malcolm flashing in his mind. He whispered, “Thank

                                    God,” and was unbound. 

The Future: Clara’s Change

After Tiyago died, I started welding 

at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. Don’t ask 

me how I got the job. It was like my man

was guiding my steps from the afterworld.

I love the intense heat and light of the gas

when metals do my bright bidding, melt and 

fuse, flow and meld, the acetylene blue 

blaze from hearts of stars lighting up the dry dock

where we repair Navy ships. I feel like I’m

a virgin planet in the cosmos, brand-new

                sun, electric aswang.

~~

Vince Gotera teaches at the University of Northern Iowa, where he served as Editor of the North American Review (2000-2016). He is also former Editor of Star*Line, the print journal of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (2017-2020). His poetry collections include Dragonfly, Ghost Wars, Fighting Kite, The Coolest Month, and the upcoming Pacific Crossing. Recent poems appeared in Altered Reality Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Dreams & Nightmares, The Ekphrastic Review, Philippines Graphic (Philippines), Rosebud, The Wild Word (Germany) and the anthologies Multiverse (UK), Dear America, and Hay(na)ku 15. He blogs at The Man with the Blue Guitar.

Acknowledgments for Previously Published Poems

“Aswang Honeymoon at the Golden Gate” was published in Spirit’s Tincture journal, November 2016.

“Aswang Christening: A Family Photo” was published in Dreams & Nightmares journal, September 2016. 

“Son of Aswang” appeared in Philippines Graphic, 14 October 2018.