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Philippines Graphic Reader

The Times, They Are A-Changing

Saturday. The afternoon’s stifling heat is rising in waves. Rogie crosses the road and pushes the gate of the compound of Dr Rieu’s residence. Rogie notices some village chiefs treating themselves with soft drinks. After the usual welcome by their candidate for town...

Patterns

The chisel as creator Lends shape to wood, to stone. Shape being the truth of character, Reality of body and bone, Sculpted fact of form, The confidence of matter. The paintbrush as creator Draws maps of rainbows, Contours of celebrations, Then blends faithful colors With their reserved spaces. Spaces being the measure of possibilities That...

Long before Darkness, Or, The Night Ileana Fell in Love

She had lived in the shadows all her life. Literally this meant the shadows of the mountains in the rural town where she was born and where she spent the earliest years of her childhood. Then came the shadows of the skyscrapers that...

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 watermelon sliced in half, mistaking the pinkish blood for the pulpy flesh of succulent fruit. Why bother to extract excessive teeth and risk being...

All Fall Down

Anatalia Ayala had promised Bellisima Cua that the story and photos about her winning the Volzhacker Prize would appear in the newspaper’s online lifestyle section this week. These had not seen print in any of the inner pages of the main broadsheet’s news...

Eight Legs Is All

It’s unfair. With small bodies, they move in all directions. Once a leg gets broken—which usually happens when they resist to be caught—they have seven more to spare. No difference. They still move like they used to. Kuya Ping is one of the tikri...

Random Pickings

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...

What a Child Cannot Learn from Books

When you wound a leather sofa with the forbidden razor blade, you see no cut but a blooming, cotton pulp breaches skin, first peeps and bursts out almost...

Homecoming

The train slowed down. Someone tapped him on the shoulder. A middle-aged lady wearing a double-breasted coat told him his stop was near. He...

By the Brook

I Nina’s eyes peer above the cover of a nameless book. She wasn’t reading, no. Her eyes are fixed on the distant figure of her...