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Philippines Graphic Reader
Boy in the Forest
Small step by small step I walk slowly toward the edge of the forest. It is early morning. I can hear familiar morning sounds. This is where Father takes me sometimes to gather firewood, herbs and edible mushrooms while I hold on to...
The 2024 NICK JOAQUIN LITERARY AWARDS’ 82 GRAPHIC SALUTE AWARDEES
“Publication is the first hurdle of a writer who wants the public to read his or her work. Publication is the first level of the competition for public awareness. To breeze past the line-up of a hundred or more writers who submitted their...
The Heart Wants What It Wants
Such a slim volume but how sharply it connects, the Reader muses, feeling as though a door were creaking open as Annie Ernaux’s “Simple Passion” triggers a meandering meditation on how sheer emotion runs the day-to-day.
Teetering on the brink of 50, the...
STUDENT’S CORNER
When the Philippines Graphic Reader started in February 2022, it became the first and only nationally-circulated, monthly, literary magazine in the country devoted to Philippine literature in English. This year, on its third year, it transitions to being an education tool for promoting...
ISSA, ONE AND ONLY
I am Issa—the one and only. My parents named me Juan, which in English sounds like “one.” In Tagalog, “one” is isa, just like my name. Well, sort of—it’s Issa, pronounced, Ee-sah.
In my language, we don’t say “she” or “he,” we say...
Arranging Furniture at Midnight
I move chairs at midnight,
Adjusting my wife’s preference
Which one is facing which.
The cats are doing football
Banging on tables and walls.
All six of them,
Siamese versus Persian
All team High Maintenance.
My angry wife wakes up,
Reminding us she needs to sleep.
I’d pay for this in the morning,
When...
