Filipino Girl, Coney Island, New York, c. 1905, by Isabel Cristina Legarda

Say she wasn’t perched on a wooden bench in Dreamland.
Say she was enjoying the amusement park
instead of being kept in its human zoo.
Say there weren’t men in suits gawking at her.
Say they weren’t pelting her with peanuts
and it hadn’t gotten to the point
where she would keep her gaze fixed
because the gaze of others transfixed her.
A pin through a butterfly.
Say they didn’t find her eyes foreign-looking
and you didn’t either.
Say you weren’t embarrassed to find her adorable.

Say she was almost two years old and wanted to walk around freely
but the bright lights and cacophony frightened her.
Say the Filipino families traveling with her
hadn’t been bilked of their pay.
Say the sideshow handlers weren’t making thousands of dollars
putting them all on display.
Say this Coney Island sideshow was the only “village”
this girl would ever know.

Say half of the Filipinos hadn’t been packed up at a moment’s notice
to be exhibited in Memphis, Macon, and Dallas.
Say the village chief hadn’t died in Dallas
and the villagers wouldn’t be haunted by his ghost.
Say they really missed the smell of pine needles in Bontoc.
Say a scholar wouldn’t soon write a book entitled
The Racial Anatomy of Philippine Islanders.
Say scholars didn’t think head size or ear shape meant anything.
Say it didn’t. Mean anything. At all.

Say a baby boy born weeks early in Dreamland
was torn from his mothers arms.
Say the doctors meant well.|
Say Coney Island was the only place he could be placed in an incubator.
Say this new technology was life-saving.
Say none of the villagers trusted it.

Say the Filipino girl hadn’t grown up surrounded by their doubt.
Say she didn’t feel like crying all the time without understanding why.
Say she mattered. To someone.|
Say she mattered. To you.
Say she was a human being.
Say she was you.

__________________________

Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there. She is a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in the New York Quarterly,  The Dewdrop, The Lowestoft Chronicle, and others. Her chapbook Beyond the Galleons was published in 2024. Find her at www.ilegarda.com or Instagram (@poetintheOR).