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...
ELEGY
I am trying to catch the best of
Life as lived with my grandchildren
I am trying to comprehend death
When I see humans good as dead
As a sudden explosion transforms
A house of healing
Into grim inferno of the dead and the dying
And wounded children wailing
Desperately looking
For...
For that one person that I never met,why does my heart feel so shallow?you take a huge portion of my soulyet somehow we never crossed paths.
The whole universe stops when I imagineyou making dreams better than all realities.Two entities dazzling in the void...
Yarn, like stemsWinding around a steel bough.
Shaped into something different,Gloves, a scarf – a present For your absentee mother.
Stalks pulled apart by tensionWith lasting curls, Never returning to what it was.
They start when the sunlight isstill soft. They wear their sarok, farm’subiquitous item. From afar, theylook like banana plants that sag at the weightof their bulky fruits. I can’t fully hear theiroccasional conversation. Maybe they talkabout fixing their lone radio, which spurtsout nothing...
Delivered from the lights of heavenand strolling earth with the likeness of Godsuppressed by society’s sanctioned sinsconvulsing norms and gospel’s grounds
Mother of many but with no wombhands are dainty as the flowers in Mayholding the bodies on the bloody paradeFlags torn down on...
(-kay Hidilyn Diaz)
‘Tong isport kong‘di ‘sinsikat ng básketból
Pagsasanay sa pagbuhat ng mabigát
Ilang kilo’t ilang timbang, búhat lahát
Nakakintal, sa katawan ‘tong paghukóm.
‘Tong paghukom, sa masel...
(Philippine Tarsier Foundation in Loboc, Bohol)
Charles, next in lineTo the throne of England,Held him:
Palm-sized proto-simian,Tiny tea saucers for eyes,Mouth with needle teeth,
More ancient than...
When My Father Passed Away
This theater is a slaughterhouse
where filaments of grief
are too shifty to cut,
amusing guests who come
along with gestures
broadly understanding
what brought them...