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Philippines Graphic Reader
The Backroom Angels Bugaloo
No one, least of all her schoolmates at St. Celestina’s Academy, would have pictured Chona Laon Badoy as the Mayor of San Semilla in Negros Occidental. Chona herself had never aspired for political office, but only to public service, as her in-laws loftily...
Tears for Sparta
Sparta, thank youfor being my faithful friendI am not your masterYou are my teacherFor you taught me to smilewhen inexplicable sorrows came byYou are my St. Michael
when a stranger jumped in our backyardnot to pick flowersbut in our house visited.I promise not to...
The Birth of Zaroasther
They connived with the dark shadows, the family who lived in a house full of glass windows and graven saints. Toraja invited me to their family dinner in Baguio City to commemorate their matriarch’s third death anniversary. That morning, five black pigs were...
Rush Hour
How’s life, old buddy
Between seventy and eighty,
eighty and ninety
Perpetually in a hurry
Heading for the cemetery
Amid emotional poverty
Are we racing against time
Or the lack of it
As tiny seconds tick away
Tick and click
Click and tick
I miss every beat
Talk of rush hours
Caught and missed
Then missed again
Everything’s...
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 sat up from his bunk and readied his 500L backpack, messenger bag, thermal jacket, bonnet, and gloves. The man...
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 incandescent light on water.
The night we sailed down the Seine,
We crossed a river of memories.
The bridges, the obelisk, palaces,...
