TO A CHILD CONTORTIONIST

Situation

Answer: The spectators are in awe of the child’s talent and skills while also worried because of the
child’s frail body. The speaker’s social conscience arose as she watched the child being exploited as a
circus freak.

Supporting Lines:
Your feat was different:
Frail body-mind contorted
Between limbs set high apart
On two chairs atop a table,
Willed to a single point
Of survival.

I did not last your act tonight

Something within me fell.

Speaker

Answer: The speaker in the poem, the author (Marjorie Evasco), is portrayed as one of the audience
watching the child perform.

Supporting Lines:
A hushed cry caught your audience
By the throat.

I did not last your act tonight

Addressee

Answer: The addressee is the child performer or the child contortionist

Supporting lines:
When they put you in the spot
Light, feather slip
Of a girl

You made each trick so

Easy, as they breathed out their
Fear, clapping their heart guts out

At Pistang Pilipino every night

Your sequined litheness
Limns a precarious stance
Language

Answer: There were a number of figurative language or words used in the poem to exemplify the
situation of the speaker while watching the child perform; personification.

Supporting lines:

A hushed cry caught your audience

By the throat.

You made each trick so

Easy, as they breathed out their
Fear, clapping their heart guts out
And away from your true Achievement.

Idk if irony ba ang “hushed cry” or nah huhuh