Mama Gina's last night in Cubao

by Ewong Martines

            life begins     at 40,      they say
     but           Mama Gina says
fuck,        I am           too fucking old.
         each year passed,               on her skin
 like weeds  bloom                   these lines
      too intricate              to reveal some
          fucking fortune.                  like her
 her patrons aged     but not
 their appetites,        and so      Mama Gina
       barely spend  the nights        with cash
in her hand      or cock in her mouth.      her joints
  have started aching           and shame
began crawling         down her face
                                     long immune to tears,
and so, tonight, and not in any other fucking night,
  Mama Gina                   decides to retire.

      with a dark homely man    she enters
a room like all other rooms          in the building
            like all other buildings
                               on this  filthy boulevard.
 she lets the man consume         every inch   of her
except      her mouth:              for women like her
      the mouth is for true love:           some fucking
love which  had not come              for her
    after all these               fornicating years.
        she moans          and she screams:
Mama Gina mastered all these     feigned feelings
of love      with a stranger,     of hope and happiness.
 o how she perspires,         but bleed she doesn’t,
    for blood       and herself    had long
been estranged.   the man hands    her few bills:
      no tip, no card,             no hope, no happiness.
           moments like this    she feels
most lonely,        but she’s too tired, too old now
          to lament       or understand.
      then,                as in those many years,
she goes to pee             profusely:
                         it is,     for all those years,
   the weeping           of her body.

a front cover of a Madame Bovary Penguin edition