Cough Drops: An Artifact by Jason Magabo Perez
Preface:
Audio file description: My reading of “Cough Drop: An Artifact” for Dial Poem AAC’s 2.0 2.0
I recently submitted a recorded reading of “Cough Drops: An Artifact” by dear friend and collaborator— writer, educator, performer and scholar Jason Magabo Perez— to Anonymous Aardvark Collective’s Dial-a-Poem 2.0 2.0. [1] The poem is from Jason’s This is for the Mostless (2017). [2]
I fell in love with “Cough Drops: An Artifact” after Jason read the piece on March 28, 2018 for Filipinx Poets: Jason Magabo Perez, Barbara Jane Reyes, Chris Santiago, Eileen R. Tabios. The reading took place at the Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco and was co-sponsored by PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists). Photos I took at the event are in the featured slideshow.
Jason reflected to me over email:
Whenever I was out promoting the book, I'd often (I wanna say almost without fail) read this poem first. It felt like I needed to bring/invoke Nanay Fortunata/Feling with me everywhere I traveled. I haven't read that poem in quite some time. Hearing you engage it, interpret it, and voice it is something so incredibly affirming. You have such a beautiful reading voice and you capture the intimacy, curiosity, and heartbreak that fuels that poem. I'm honored. For real for real. Thank you for holding this poem with me and for you and for us, the mostless, my dear kasama.
For accessibility modifications for my submission, as well as for future reference for online access to this beautiful, bittersweet poem on intergenerational artifacts— I’ve transcribed “Cough Drops: An Artifact” below, with Jason’s consent. (I recently participated in Jason’s Artifact Lab, as part of Digital Sala, and am looking forward to future collaborations with this dear artist and scholar.)
— Erina Alejo, Summer 2020
Image descriptions: Cover of Jason Magabo Perez’s This is for the Mostless; Poets Jason, Barbara Jane Reyes, Chris Santiago and Eileen R. Tabios, with Edwin Lozada of PAWA (Philippine American Writers and Artists). March 28, 2018 at the Philippine Consulate General SF.
Cough Drops: An Artifact
By Jason Magabo Perez
for Fortunata A. Perez (1916-2006)
This, I imagine, is how I’ve begun to associate the smell of eucalyptus with perpetual melancholia.
It is 1972.
I don’t exist. Yet.
But Epifanio, who later when I’m born becomes my late grandfather, certainly does. Exist.
& most importantly, Epifanio is married to Fortunata, who later when I’m born becomes my grandmother.
I imagine Fortunata, not yet my grandmother, in 1972, at the airport in Manila, which at this point is not yet Ninoy Aquino International, to smell of stale cigarette smoke & beer, & to be wearing thick plastic eyeglass frames, her hair tied back tightly, her pantalones pressed neatly, her dark red lipstick perfect, & her hopes & fears of migration nestled in the crevices of her tiny little face.
Epifanio, I imagine, is not nervous at all.
Epifanio, I’ll later hear, promises, & promises to meet his beloved Fortunata in the States once their children— one of whom will become my father when I’m born, the rest of whom will become my aunties & uncles— are settled.
Today, in 1972, Fortunata is leaving under the condition that Epifanio, her beloved, will follow.
It is more than likely that Fortunata doesn’t want to migrate to the States.
I’m too old, she is thinking. It’s not worth it.
Fortunata has heard so very many things about others who have migrated.
The States, I’m sure she has heard, is a scary place.
Fortunata, I’m certain, has had nightmares of being robbed & pushed on the street by odd-looking people who have soft hair & angular noses. Those odd-looking people who have soft hair & angular noses are the same odd-looking people who have soft hair & angular noses, & the nerve, & the history, & U.S. Passports, & look so lost yet so entitled here, in 1972, at the airport in Manila.
So, here, at the airport in Manila, Fortunata hugs & hugs Epifanio with focus & intention.
“This,” jokes Epifanio, “maybe will gonna be the last time you will gonna see me.”
&… it is. The last time.
When Fortunata, who still isn’t yet my grandmother, lands in Chicago, one of her sons, one of my later uncles, presents the news: “Tatay is sick.”
Days later, it is revealed: “Tatay has had a heart attack.”
Tatay, or Epifanio, who later become my late grandfather who I’ll have never met, the love of Fortunata’s life, sadly, has died.
Fortunata, in 1972, is looking down.
Fortunata is biting her lip.
Fortunata is reaching into her purse & grabbing a yellow Halls cough drop, eucalyptus-flavored.
Fortunata is now unwrapping the cough drop, is now placing it on her tongue & is now, in 1972, & I’m sure in her future grave which exists in this very now, cursing & cursing the States by biting, biting down so hard, which so much focus, so much vigor, & so much intention that we, all of us, from then & from now, might never ever feel like we ever belonged here.