Poetry

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...

I’m tired of this shithouse of a country:its coddling with thieves and tyrants, its short memory, its naïveté, its misplacedforgiveness. I got one hand on Google mousing over “immigrant jobs in X country” andanother grasping my daughter’s words, like a beaded rosary that night...

My holiday wishesAs I gazeInto the wideOpen oceanIn the islandOf my birth Save that giftAnd reserve itFor the hungryand the homelessIn the South. Save the soundOf Christmas carolsAnd toll the bellsFor fishersWho lost their boatsAnd sources of livelihoodFrom the angry seas. Save the merrymakingAnd transform it...

Among the rubble was a bloodied coinWhich they found in the hand of a dead boy,Held in the hand that should have clasped a toy.At his age there were games for him to joinBut he was outside, right in the lineOf fire, in...

Last night, she mumbled a brief prayer.Brief because her God hates verboseprayer. She prayed for abundance.This morning, she woke upto the early gossip of sparrowsperching on the neighbor’s clothesline.Outside, the coral vines are pregnantwith umbels and umbels of salmon-pinkflowers. The tambis fruits now...