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Philippines Graphic Reader
The Gardener
Flowers grew in the cracks
of the gardener’s calloused hands
as she glanced at the garden she cultivates
She never wanted to disrupt their growth,
yet they need the cutting.
The plants got hurt,
yet they bowed at the gentleness of her pruning.
Her finger bleeds,
yet she will always be...
Lighter
It was Kimmy’s last night at work. Before the shift ended, she grabbed a box in her locker where she kept all the lighters random people had left lying around in the designated smoking areas in the building. At lunch break, she went...
On Session Road, Remembering Mike de Leon’s Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising
The projector hums. In the theater’s dusk, a flicker unspools
a world. The scent of rice wine and stale popcorn grounds him,
a shadow of a boy who sinks into the creaking vinyl seat.
He came to this darkness seeking a map to a life he...
Echoes of the Blue Fire
Our ancestors believed the butat-iw were bad omens.
They appeared when I was alone—wild orbs of floating blue fire, the size of my Baba’s fist. When in great curiosity I tried to reach for them, they would vanish with a soft hush, only to...
Still Life with Twelve Sunflowers, after Scrolling
Van Gogh’s sunflowers —
all twelve of them —
so lively, lush,
standing, bending;
they do not submit
to ikebana’s poise
and posture —
golden — no — bronze —
beautiful yet strange.
I am certain
this is the color
of grief thick as impasto,
of desire leaping
like a gazelle,
beyond the canvas’s frame —
wedged in...
The Weight of Small Things
Fear is at the back of her mind, a shimmering heat in the distance, a glowing ember in the dark. Silently acknowledged but never confronted, because naming might push her off the deep end. But it is there, biding its time, like a...
