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Poetry

Two Poems

Bumebenjonson: Hey Lady I could have been your lover and you know it, Mama always said that I’m handsome And talented, a dream come… (wait for it)True: your better lover and much better poet.Too...

My Mother’s Skirts

After my mother died, I decided to gather twine from her frayed skirts and braid them into wreaths. I discovered that each skirt had a story:  The white one she wore when she married my father.  It was a civil wedding, not a church...

I Read Your Name: A War Requiem

I read your nameWritten on a wounded treeBarely standing on the lakeshoreI gaze at the sadness of its former shadowThat remains in the memory of birdsAnd in the spirit of the waterBravely kissing traces of its roots I read your nameWritten on a child’s...

SUPPER AT EMMAUS

In Harmony with Caravaggio Imagine their disbelief: these two men,perhaps fishermen like most of the twelve,beholding the stranger do the familiarblessing, the breaking of bread.One half-stood in fright, nearlytoppling his chair, breath taken away. What would you have doneif you were there, ensconced in the...

Four Poems in Search of a Government

Stones There is an old man.Waking, his heart beats fast, someone’s running after someone.He can’t remember his dreams these days.He fixes himself for the 25,719th morning.Well, he tries as much as he could.He locks the steel gate of his daughter’s house.He goes to the...

Shutter

A fast-clicking cameraCaptures the momentWhen a loaded balloon breaks,The water inside itReasonably in the shapeOf a glass Earth, as wellBefore it quickly fallsApart, leaking away,Flopping, as it were,Into a shapeless puddle. We who have been moldedBy tenderness before the denial,The fevered seasonOf turning awayTo...

Random Pickings

Naked

We have our palms embedded in the trunks of trees, embroidered in its leaves were desires left seasoned by the worms. That the fruits were products of...

Rainbow’s End

Don’t come runningPanting, gasping, throbbing, weepingOn bended kneesWhen rainbows cease shiningAnd bougainvilleas stop bloomingWhen no pot of gold gleams on the horizonOn the boulevard of...

Butterfly

Do not catchA butterfly With your hands,Especially not A white oneEven with itsEver so slightStreaks of black. You might Damage itsDelicate wingsAnd it can Never fly again.Catch it, rather,With...

Stella Loves Saluyot

Stella relished each spoonful.Adobong saluyot and rice.First taste of it in five years.First time to clear her plate all clean. Between smiles and dancing eyes,“Asim!...