Amphibian
Description
Exploring queerness, belonging, and the meaning of home through the lens of a Filipino American
How does a queer brown body move through the American panorama? In Amphibian, Joseph O. Legaspi explores the metaphor of "amphibious living"—adapting, surviving, and flourishing in varying geographies—as it pertains to immigrants and to queerness. These poems draw on the natural world to illuminate personal experiences and, in turn, closely examine cultural, environmental, and societal constructs and concerns.
Legaspi searches in nature for evidence of the validity of his own existence, determined to declare his belonging. Dwelling in landscape as a guide into the interior, Amphibian journeys not only between earth, water, and air, but also into the past, cataloging an immigrant's departures, arrivals, and returns to native soil. This moving collection is at every turn liberating, fraught, and altered.
More details
Person
Joseph O. Legaspi is the author of two previous poetry collections, Threshold and Imago, and of three chapbooks: Postcards; Aviary, Bestiary; and Subways. He works at Columbia University, teaches at Fordham University, and resides with his husband in Queens, New York.
Content
I. Land
In Medias Res
Grace
Feasting
Longyi, a Lyric
In the Tropics
Weeding/Wedding
Your Mother Wears a House Dress
Father of the Graveyard
Twilight
Kissing My Father
II. Shore
Hamburger
Ókúrú
Ode to Table Grapes (Sultana)
Mongrel
Lotusland
Canandaigua
When God Came Passing Through an Artist Colony in the Hudson Valley
Immigrant Spring
Ants
Old Sage of Siquijor
Manongs' Lament
III. Water
Sketches from a Childhood Sea
My father washes his hands.
To Boil Water (i)
A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours
Dear hammerhead,
The Stones
Underlife
To Boil Water (ii)
Two Figures on a Boat
Eye
IV. Ether
Family, an Ars Poetica
Ode to Dragon Fruit (Pitaya)
Culture
Bringing Home the Ox
The House of Your Childhood Is Smaller than Memory
Quita y Pone
Anthropause Zuihitsu
Urban Jungle
Meteorology
The last night you were alive
Aurora Frog
V. Air
Distance
First World
On an Island (New York City)
Zuihitsu: Jackson Heights, Spring 2020
Ducks
Easter, Bonifacio High Street
At the Simply Butterflies Conservation Center
Someone
Heaven in Grand Central Station
The Tree Sparrows
Amphibians
Acknowledgments
Notes