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Philippines Graphic Reader

While I Still Can

Let me, please I beg of you Let me catch the whiff of fresh air Against my cheeks The first ray of sunshine As new day breaks As it kisses the grass Green on my barefoot   Before it filters through The stained glass windows Bearing memories of a blurry past Let me step...

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The children of the town had once belonged to the streets. Their laughter rattled off the cracked sidewalks, their games stretched across alleys and fields, and dusk was a sign, not for disconnection, but for one more round of hide-and-seek or patintero, a...

On Womanhood

Being a woman is thrust upon you. You walk under stars and suddenly casually, make a fist in your pocket and hold your key—like a weapon. It is keen awareness of fabric length, and clenched assessment of skin, padlocks, mirrors, stopping cars, of home routes, and drink offers. Being a woman is weighing the chances of...

Vic Pura

An author is confronted by the protagonist of her 32nd fiction. She had written a story about the incident, more or less an undisguised one, populated by the same characters with little or no changes in name. I followed suit and just used one...

Birder

In celebration of the October 4 feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of the environment and all of God's creatures. Eyes follow the sound Ears scan the foliage Breath on hold Heart gripped still Mind wiped clear like the sky in the lake To await The moment The presence. A...

Nesting

I used to bite my tongue a lot. I hated facing things head on. My emotions feel like they have all risen to the surface from years of being anchored down to the sea bed, barnacled and all. I’ve become a lot more...

Random Pickings

Cut

I stretched my fingers, and there I feltA cut, a slit of tender fleshUncertain where it came from, or when —Maybe yesterday, over piles...

Saint-Paul de Mausole Sonnet After Van Gogh

                                         The painting started out as one crude sketch, lines and proportions silly. All over the scenery, smudge of trees and houses. There was form and there was...

Joi Barrios’ Sa Aking Pagkadestiyero/In My Exile

Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2021 (with translations in English by various writers) Sa Aking Pagkadestiyero/In My Exile by Joi Barrios rings a...

Naked

I’ll wear nothingbut my trembling desirethe wild beat of my pulsethe lingering whispers of my past. I’ll wear nothingbut the ache of my lost love the...