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Philippines Graphic Reader
Palaspas
He awoke at dawn. Silvery light filtered through the paper-thin fabric of the handkerchief covering his eyes. His limbs were sore from being squeezed into the cramped hull of his bangka.
As he stood up, Silver stretched his limbs and let his knotted...
Hidden Sounds of Nature
White, fresh snowfall
Its arrival, highly anticipated
presents a silence
All is absorbed
All sounds trapped in all this snow
The fluff, the layers
have made it
All quiet
All slow
Eventually
It is no longer the flutter of snow
that I hear
Emerge
The flutter of wings
Bird songs
Birds sing
Come
It is the arrival of spring
Sugar Dreams
She was finally here. Hong Kong. A place that wasn’t in her bucket list, but life had other plans and threw it her way. From her room on the twenty-fifth floor of East, one of the many chic hotels in Taikoo Shing, she...
TWO FOR PUNGAW (or “melancholy” in Bicolano)
A Filipino Stillness
Not the light in Amorsolo’s canvas but the smile that kindles the frame.
Not in dreams, where I lose you among crocodiles. Your silence, a dead end.
Not during advent. When we descend on the archipelago.
Famished birds buoyed by memories cleansed by storms.
A...
Ashfall
After the blast, the local radio frantically reported “about forty thousand people running for their lives.” Fancy that. Following up on this, I then filed my first news story on the eruption with that “massive evacuation” angle that hit the Daily Star headline...
To Them who Mean the Most
Love Introduced
The sun is caught
Somewhere between your teeth
It must be
When you smile
Cherry blossoms bloom
And rose petals sprout
If not on the ground,
Then at the very least in my stomach
When your eyes crinkle towards me,
The world is still and the sky is gentle
And the lone...
