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.
Her silence is resolute
Which courts revolution
Without speaking.
My daughter is spilling with a love
That stutters, stumbling upon itself
Like a spindly car sputtering as it starts.
Love is a sinewy limb
For those born beside kids
Who kick cars to process
Fits of anger in fits and starts.
I wish I could tell her this regime
Of silence, the stoic blue
Dragons of this porcelain vase
Would soon gently shatter, and out
pours a river, and bloom goes a
Flower.
I wish I could tell her that the distance
Between her and her classmates
is temporary, pain with meaning,
Because pain is fleeting,
And meaning is scar tissue:
The coughing child pain leaves you.
I wish I could tell her to nurse
This consumptive child in her
Womb, who does not kick and stir.
Indeed, it is a tomb because where dead
Lie cold, ghosts bristle with stories
Untold.
I wish I could tell her little Meaning
Will find stories to read them both
That words will gather round to hear
And roost in, like expectant hens
Awaiting chicks rearing to call her
Mother.
I wish I could tell her boys
And pearls and pretty girls
Would come to her and see not
The stutter, or the drooping shoulder,
But the river, the flower,
The rhyme and the meter.
I wish she could tell me a story,
where we’ll stand, face-to-face,
Mouths ajar, loaded, cocked,
Revolution, inexplicable,
Yet at the tips of our tongues.
Written by Luis Lagman
