For a time, I convinced my mother to write
mini memoirs of her farmer childhood
in the Philippines. In one, a monkey bites
her during a nap in a hammock; in another,
she falls from a tree onto a snakebite,
and her father tosses her into the Pacific.

This morning, she tells me of
leading a goat on a rope
up a hill. At the top, it starts to rain
and the goat runs back down.

I tell my mom she should write this.
She says, no, you should.
So I ask how did you feel
being dragged by a goat?

My mom looks to the ceiling,
patterns of neural pathways
on a sea of white.

She says, I wanted to cook him
for dinner. He scratched my arm
I couldn’t untie the goat from the tree
to eat grass but he didn’t like rain,
he smelled rain, smelled the smoke
out of the fog, the smoke up the mountain
smoke from where the ground is so warm
it evaporates, and you hear raindrops, the wind
blowing while crying the goat was very strong,
when you’re a kid it feels like a water slide
only no water on top of hills going down
trying to run – in the Philippines that’s how
it feels when you get dragged by a goat, she went into
water – jumped into the river – a forever pool – rock you jump
over it’s deep – after rain and flood washed out all dirt
when water turned clear back when I was kid – like after
the flood no leeches would come with leeches I hollered
and nearly stabbed a leg with a knife – neighbor cut
his leeches and his leg – plenty of leeches in our river – flood
clears leeches – flood clears everything – the flood will drag you all
the way to the ocean

(originally published in Hello America Stereo Cassette, Winter 2022)