Dishes
Author
– Conchitina Cruz
Background
– Conchitina "Chingbee" R. Cruz, a Filipina poet, who teaches literature at UP, Diliman is
a former an INTARMED student, Cruz shifted to the University of the Philippines'
Creative Writing program where she started to achieve high feats of accomplishments.
– Her works include Disappear, Dark Hours, A catalogue of clothes for sale from the
closet of Christine Abella: perpetual student, ukay fan, and compulsive traveler. She is
also the youngest poet in the anthology A Habit of Shores, the third part in Gémino H.
Abad's three-volume collection of one hundred years of Philippine poetry and verse.
– Cruz has won two Palanca Awards to date, one in 1996 for "Second Skin" and another
in 2001 for "The Shortest Distance". Her book Dark Hours won the 2006 National Book
Award for Poetry.
Characters Setting
The persona In a kitchen
Plot
The poem is somehow a scenario of the persona's life.
In this scenario she was washing dishes in the middle of the
night, while she fabricates moments that she would spend with
her lost loved one. She reminisces the times on how she lost
him/her and felt sad about how she never met him/her.
Plot
Dishes soak in the basin, bigger than mine, definitely perfect teeth,
my share in keeping house. wearing the blue shirt I might have
They're down to three, given you for Christmas.
with two weddings done "Did you feed the dogs already?
and I, the youngest, turn "I ask. "Yes," you say,
into an only child. Outside "but Mumbo's missing again."
the dogs scratch the screen door, "Well, why don't you go fix
expecting their food. The moon
the gap in the fence?"
peeps into the kitchen window.
"I did, but he still got out."
I soap the dish and picture you
Or something like that, some
sitting on the counter,
mundane conversation we would forget
by the drainer. Brown eyes, perhaps,
the next day. I rinse
the dishes and they're done.
There are just a few of them
anyway. I think of how
I had lost you before
I was even born, how you
had spent your birthday dead
in the hospital, leaving
a family hungry for memories.
Isn't it strange, how we had never even met?
The dogs are impatient, scratching
the door harder, wanting to be fed.
I wash the sound of your voice
off my hands, down the drain,
and look out the window, soaked
in moonlight. The moon,
always too far from my reach,
never from my sight
Literary Devices
Figures of Speech
The moon peeps into the kitchen
window
- personification
I think how I lost you before I was even born.
- Irony
How you had spent your birthday dead in the hospital
- Irony
The moon always too far from my reach never from my sight
- Antithesis
Sound of your voice
- Metonomy
Idiomatic Expressions
Down the drain
- Disappearing
Keeping house
- manage a household
Symbolism
I wash the sound of you voice off my hand
- to stop remembering or forget about her beloved.
Dishes soak in the basin
- feeling down or depressed.
Keeping house
- mundane events of the world.
Dogs scratching the screen door
- responsibilities to the world.
Point of View
First Person View
– the persona expresses her thoughts or about what he or
she is experiencing.
Persona
The one who longs to a lost loved one.
Themes
Nothing was lost until you lose a friend
Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my
soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face. I
know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.
If you have ever lost a loved one, then you know
exactly how it feels. And if you have not, then you
cannot possibly imagine it.
Relevance
In this world we must accept that our time will
come the we too will pass and be forgotten but our
words and deeds are to be remembered.
Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You
can get used to the weight, and how it holds you in
place but would sometimes limit us to grow to our
full potential.
References
Cruz, C.(). Dishes.
Nicholas Sparks. (2015). 100 Heart-Wrenching & Powerful Quotes About Losing
A Loved One. Retrieved from http://thoughtcatalog.com/lorenzo-jensen-
iii/2015/08/100-heart-wrenching-powerful-quotes-about-losing-a-loved-one on
January 27, 2016
Lemony Snicket. (2015). 100 Heart-Wrenching & Powerful Quotes About Losing
A Loved One. Retrieved from http://thoughtcatalog.com/lorenzo-jensen-
iii/2015/08/100-heart- wrenching-powerful-quotes-about-losing-a- loved-one on
January 27, 2016
Ben Bocquelet. (2011). Amazing world of Gumball. Ireland, Europe: Cartoon Network
Development Studio Europe.
