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Pause for a Moment

The summits of the Pride Mountains are so high that they could not be conquered. Glorious to the eyes but tiresome to caring hearts. And the trails to...

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...

Four Poems for the Future

Nothing’s Too Far There is no escaping the long arm of memory, & the more I try to, I turn to it instead: During trips to my...

Cassandra’s Tale

Leafing through the brittle pages and reading the short story again and again, Cassandra seeks the rhyme and rhythm she thinks necessary for it...

The Photograph

Here my mother, who must have been in her early forties, sits on a stone ledge at Fort San Pedro overlooking the Guimaras Strait. The sun must have been strong, as she smiles, trying not to squint against the glare, as her left arm holds my then six-year-old...

The Cold War Aswang Incident

In the year 1950, my village knew little of the Cold War although its geopolitical tremors reached even our mountains. The Philippine national government, backed by the Americans, was locked in a struggle against the Huk rebellion for control of Central Luzon's mountain...

Sisyphus, Rockstar

One last time, my forgotten friend, poise your calloused hands and dig your battered heels into the dirt. Left behind by the new world. The others, glam dolls and pulpit idols, have all long gone. I watch as you reach the top, as a slow, hazy blues chord from a...

The Gunner of APC 314

In the main gate opens at 0500H. My smart sports watch reads 0438H. Emerging from the shadows of the mango trees fronting the women's barracks, I walk briskly toward the lamppost. Silhouettes jog counterclockwise around the well-lit oval, their rhythmic strides breaking the...

Another War

I was seven a war marred my hometown Tíyo and the fishermen soldiers the deep sea battlefield a compound of the sea’s little bones of sable sands in a wicked bottle their arsenal made the Earth mumbled in tremulous waves the heavens bled scales of shattered souls to the flesh of my innocence.

Three Poems Before 2025

2024 What do you want to say to a year yet to explain itself? The days are heaving, the hours a diary made meaningful with our ghosts: gray, tenuous, prone to our forgetting. Just tell me something new. Or describe to me freedom as an animal. Show me skin moistened by worship, waterfalls like...

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