Marjorie is born into a family of teachers who were "always talking English". she was brought up and educated as a Roman Catholic and her formative years in school were spent under the tutelage of German and Belgian nuns.
Marjorie's prizing-winning poetry books are: Dreamweavers: Selected Poems 1976-1986 (1987) and Ochre Tones: Poems in English and Cebuano(1999). Ochre Tones was launched last May 1997 at National Artist Edith L. Tiempo's residence on Montemar (Sibulan, Negros Oriental). Evasco calls this volume a " book of changes," following Dreamweavers which for her was a " book of origins."
This are the three poem of Marjorie Evasco
CARAVAN OF THE WATERBEARERS (Mitzvah with Grace)
We will not forget the evil eye
of the storm they raised,
gutting the grounds we defended.
We have been trained
to look away too often
when man’s flesh, muscle, bone,
knifed woman, to protect
the child’s eye from the dust
of the lord’s sin against
our kind, pretending
our tears are daughters of the wind
blowing across no-woman’s- land.
We have had to seek the center
of the storm in the land we
claim is ours, too. Faces keening towards
the full force of winds
once blinding us, we see
the blur of broken earth,
blasted wastes, damned seas.
Our vision clears in our weeping We have joined the trek
of desert women, humped over
from carrying our own oases
in the claypots of our lives,
gathering broken shards we find
in memory of those who went
ahead of us, alone.
When we seize the water source
our ranks will complete the circle
we used to mark around our tents,
making homes, villages, temples,
schools, our healing places.
And we will bear witness for our daughters and sons,
telling them true stories
of the caravan.
THE QUICK BRUISE AND RUN Of LOVE (for Mary Ann & Marc)
I.
Summer twilight slices into two
Halves of a sweet cantaloupe;
At table, the speckled stargazer
Opens its fragrant petals windward;
At my foot, our old cat dreams.
Nothing here betrays the grace
We speak of at each meal, together
Or alone. Today, while one of us
Sits under the tamarinds,
And another wades the golden river,
I alone sit at table, a mother
Attending to the core of fruit
Cleaving to the knife, the fuchsia
Flower sundered by summer’s heat,
The cat purring its ninth life away
II.
Yesterday night after dinner, we told
An old story, pausing at a part
We did not love but could not
Gnaw off. It is your hurt fathered
Into child’s shape, vulnerable
To faithlessness. As the story twists In the telling, you speak of a new
Born child, whose limbs could break
Or neck snap. were one of you to hold
The tender heels and swing against a wall.
We need to put this story right.
III.
Long, long ago on a fevered night,
A mother sat by her child’s bed,
Damp cloth soothing flame of forehead,
Limbs. in her vigil she vowed
On pain of death, to beg the life
Or health back into those cheeks.
The fever broke, she held her kind
And knew the gods had ears.
Son, Daughter, take this story-child
With care. In the curve of your arms
Your father’s fruit survives the fall,
Becomes your bruised but living grace.
