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Philippines Graphic Reader

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 no form. Even the wind thwarted. Galaxies like fireflies searing into the canvas, the firmament incandescent. And big words won’t convince the...

When the Heart Knows

Charito's pace slowed as she neared Barbara's, the renowned restaurant in Intramuros that is next to the centuries-old San Agustin Church. The cobblestone streets shimmered in the late afternoon sun, their rough edges whispering stories from the past. Horse-drawn carriages passed by, their...

A King Lear in Cage

Trekking the road to house of aged, those grown feeble, fatuous to outside world. I come as servant to bring that which is longed for to nourish souls that thirst. Room gets filled with hum of tasks. one by one, they come in wheels, cane. Lucky those who ambulate,...

After the Ascension

(Short Fiction in the Style of Joaquin Antonio Penalosa’s God’s Diary) When the Cherubim settled down and the fluttering of wings turned into soft rustlings, the Father said, “So tell us, My Son, tell us, what happened.”     The Father knew everything, of course, from...

Parallel Poems, Like Parallel Lines, Don’t Meet

Confucius Say The dreams I can’t recall on waking Must be shaking their heads if they were Folk, from not a false universal Sense of waste that extends to even The airy nothing that they are – such As, if the ruthless truth be quoted From Quixote, we all of...

Fence Sitter

THE SWEETEST RAMBUTAN she had ever tasted grew on their neighbor’s tree. When it was in season, the tree brimmed with loose hanging clusters of bright red fruit covered with fleshy pliable spines.  Birds flocked to feed on them and bees buzzed with...

Random Pickings

Near Paradise

1. The main dusty road is a gray strip, parted in between rice paddies and bamboo groves, which in turn separate the sawali houses, which...

Penalty of our Frailties

“And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all...

What Are Years?

“It’s now or never,” said Marie, who’s in her mid-twenties, with a rugged face, vivacious and full of urgency. She took her friend’s right...

Indignation as Elegy

An elephant without a face greeted me on Facebook today, his trunk and tusks hacked away by poachers eager for ivory. At first I thought it was a...