Before the second episode of the Philippines Graphic Literary Workshop (PGLW) concluded on March 21, we knew that we had one more thing that we can offer our bright young fellows: a starting platform for their creative endeavors. Here, we present one of their final outputs from the workshop. We also asked them to provide an artwork that they think best represents their stories. Read on.
M. tells me by the time
He turns bald, he’ll wake
His pistol under the mattress,
Bag over his head, and trigger.
What a way to be discovered.
Without pain, abandon
an open scalp to welcome
His bareness. Saves trouble
With the clean-up, too:
I’ll go well-kept, he breathes
Through the reds in his lungs
And maybe smoke is what sheds us
Both, in this corner of a closing campus
Where night holds our fluorescence
As, on the wall, we mark the heights
Of our lips with dead Marlboros.
He does his party trick
To the window of an empty classroom:
Recalls a poem where an old man
wanders for youth, fair. The days
fast enough to settle the stride.
Because a man will be breaking
him tonight, we grab at a ledge
To keep from scattering.
If we ever get old
than we planned to be old
Let’s get that hair transplant in Turkey
Get boobs in Thailand
But we’re writers, so maybe I’ll just sweep
The floor of my mother’s salon
and weave the day’s hair to a cap.
And if you can take a good dick
You better have the neck
For the 20-ton wig. I’ll make you
A queen. You’ll make me
A mother. How gorgeously real
We become in this artifice.
Written by Gian Zureta
