Crispin Rodrigues (b. 1988)

SELECTED POEMS

origin story (ii)

i was born five minutes into the year of the dragon,
meaning i was precisely the weight of an ingot.
while i was cradled in my mother's bosom,
my tongue was cleaved by the blunt tip of a pen
as my father scribbled my existence on a nurse's form,
re-attaching my bloodied umbilical cord to every blank
the government made mandatory. he made sure
to fill every gap & grid with a letter or hyphen, 
until what was left were not blanks but sighs, signs

of the trouble that was to come. my father said
when i was born the doctor spent an hour examining
me before determining that my face was yellow
from jaundice, comparing scale to skin,
my wings too porous for flight, lungs too weak
to breathe fire. sometimes when races mix, a monster
emerges from confused genetic material—
in my mother's culture, the dragon is a revered
great beast of luck, the emperor's favourite,
while in my father's religion, it is a metaphor
for satan, pierced in the heart by george's great spear.
here lies a baby trying to rip itself apart.

the doctor kept me under observation for three days
to see if my cells undergo further mitosis.
outside the nursery, my parents peered
through the divider at their wheezing son, praying
to their gods. for protection or an exorcism,
nobody was sure.

by Crispin Rodrigues
from dragon.paper.wind (2024)

 

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