By R. Benedito Ferrão

Gecko looked well today
Her belly distended,
translucent parchment skin revealed
lines wrapped around her
like map-trails, branches of my family tree

Her tail is still a stub from which now grows
the beginning of something new
Father had flung his slipper at her
That part of her body severed,
she slithered away

Sister gathered up the curling appendage
I thought it had burned in the fire
into which we’d rendered things
we no longer wanted to see

But the other day
I saw the twitching piece,
its colour unknown to me
An abdomen had sprung from it

Gecko has been with us a long time
I ask her who my Mother was
Her tongue darts out and caresses an eyeball
I’ve not known a time
when she wasn’t here

She slithers behind the picture of The Virgin
Auntie says when we cannot see them,
lizards pray
For what, I want to know
but have always been scared of her

At the funeral, Cousin whispered
that Auntie had poisoned Uncle
She used the venom of a reptile,
Cousin says in my ear

I ask Grandfather when he visits
if in olden times
Gecko was there
Through rheumy eye he regards me

She came with me, he declares
Free passage on the Indian Ocean
Stowed away in my trunk
for the month-long voyage
in the hold of the great big ship

In Mombasa by the lighthouse,
she was born
Only survivor of the brood
Mother, too? I ask
He pretends not to hear me 

Delicately, in her left palm,
Auntie cradles the tail
from which had sprouted
the ridged abdomen

It has added to itself
a leg, an arm
I cannot hear the things
she whispers to it

I suddenly recall
Mother’s voice
when she cooed to me
a Swahili lullaby
laced with another tongue

Gecko is clinging to the pane,
her scales like the scallops
of mother-of-pearl
that once
these windows adorned

Tail renewed,
her tender underside
shows itself
through the glass

Her stomach expands
I trace the lines that outward
from her heart radiate
Into cartographies unknown

When she least suspects
I fling the window open
She falls upon sharp red laterite
Her body splits,
the eggs with it

I consign her remains to the flames
Slithering tail, shells of eggs,
puckered toes
Journeywoman,
keeper of family secrets

It wasn’t till today that I saw
the lizard eye that remained
Its edges ant-devoured,
membrane slowly descending

It fixed me with half-gaze
I was unable to look away
Gecko, I asked again,
did you know my Mother?

R. Benedito Ferrão has lived and worked in Asia, Europe, N. America, and Oceania. He is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies at The College of William and Mary. His writing appears in Riksha, The Good Men Project, Mizna, and other publications.

The sound recording of ‘Degenerate’ previously appeared in Golden Walkman Magazine.