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Philippines Graphic Reader

Still Life with Twelve Sunflowers, after Scrolling

Van Gogh’s sunflowers  — all twelve of them  — so lively, lush, standing, bending; they do not submit to ikebana’s poise and posture — golden — no — bronze — beautiful yet strange. I am certain this is the color of grief thick as impasto, of desire leaping like a gazelle, beyond the canvas’s frame — wedged in...

The Weight of Small Things

Fear is at the back of her mind, a shimmering heat in the distance, a glowing ember in the dark. Silently acknowledged but never confronted, because naming might push her off the deep end. But it is there, biding its time, like a...

GUERILLA DOWNPOUR

There is no warning— the sky, a sudden insurgent, opens with                     guerrilla downpour. Torrential rain, an unrelenting witness, assaults the fragile spines of trees and the quiet bones of houses. Water spills, not as mercy, but as a force that shatters the brittle calm we cling to. In the heart's small orchard, the fruit...

Salt Prayer

"There must be something strangely sacred about salt.It is in our tears and in the sea."from SAND AND FOAM (1926) by Khalil Gibran Matthew 5:13— "You are the salt of the earth. But ifthe salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made saltyagain?...

Something More

BY THIS TIME next year, Teresita could be elsewhere, unmindful of the biting cold. She could see herself walking along a cobblestone path strewn with scattered leaves from maple trees that lined the streets. It would be October, and the foliage would be...

Mawr

“Do we ever win, Mom?” Raniw smiled at the young ginger cat, barely out of kittenhood, who asked the question. “No, Runi, we will never win. Death finds our hooman in different ways. It’s just that the people we seek to protect could be used...

Random Pickings

Bound by the Same Umbilical Cord

Stone and Scratcher after a photo by Frank Cimatu My human knows how to scratch ecstasy and submission out of me, rendering my retractable claws cold as a wet...

MEMOS

To the Woodcarvers of Betis 1 if i could feel the cold hardness of wood, would i also know your will, woodcarver, your will to hew a soul out of a...

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...

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...