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Labasero

The day Niko’s Mama got COVID, City Hall announced they needed to secure BIR permits and city health certificates to maintain their fish stalls. Niko had just come back from fishing, his face mask soaked in sweat, carrying buckets of rumpi to their...

The Lost Memories of Tomorrow

Anita woke up without a name. The idea was terrifying, but for some reason, she was calm as the doctor called her name. “Anita? Can you hear me?” The doctor peered down at her, but his eyes kept shifting away. Another figure came into her...

First of Many

Throughout the annals of history, many facts are long forgotten or never recorded at all. This is accurate regarding the time we humans lurked in caves. Although it is dispiriting to think so, there are countless tales of hardship across every corner of...

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 of unsanded wood Yet it never left the way it arrived, like thatJanuary afternoon, many years ago -I washed my...

Brave New World

It’s 20 minutes after 8 in the eveningAnd everyone is readying themselvesFor another wretched night of fragile safety.Air raid sirens bellow throughout Kiev and Kharkiv and all over UkraineAs the ceaseless roar of rockets and missilesDart throughout the merciless winter night.The huddled masses...

FROM SEAWARD AND OTHER POEMS

Seaward Escaping the harshnessof a pandemicI swim for this                                                        antipathy to endlike sandscapes wheresea turtles go underto lay...

Random Pickings

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...

Killing Trees Softly

They were killing us softly it hurt so bad.  Softly, slowly, exceedingly painful. Think of an open wound left to rot under the sun. Dust and...

Threads of Courage

The night the war reached Cebu, Maria woke to the sound of distant explosions. It was April 1942 and she had just turned fourteen...

At the Seine

Were the ripples at the river Seine My memories, your face will be broken  Into a thousand pieces, each fragment of you Cut into countless shimmers Dancing in...