Fermenting Vinegar in Sugar Country
By Tara Tulshyan
La-Carlota lives off of kalamay, that we feed to our children
– the same ones nanay fed to us. Now, sugar spills over our
breaths when we speak. We used to suck on the sugarcane root,
molars bracketing in the bark until the juice brines our tongues
greasing the cairn of our cavities. We sit at the back of the truck
whose belly empties spears of stiff green that we hew our teeth
on. We care for this sugar that’s why Nong ropes the weeds, rips
it off the ground fingernails peeling.The roots train themselves
to tangle into the soil, to bear leaves, to resist the heat that pricks
its cane. Nay kneads this sugar into kalamayhati, that we knot
against our teeth and pull with our tongues until it melts, lacing
it into our rice, softening the kernels baked in the rain. When
the man on television fled to Hawaii, outsiders brought their
sugar in. Water could not pump into our mountains, paddies
gone dull beside the land where black flies chew on the cheek
of the mountain, harvesting the molasses flutters, our canes
splitting at the ends, our sugar gushing out trowelling the roads
their men will walk on.
Tara Tulshyan is a sophomore currently living in the Philippines. Her works have appeared on or are forthcoming in DIALOGIST, Rising Phoenix Press and Ilanot Review, among several others. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of The Woolgathering Review.