This is how you make sinigang:
Take a kilo of buto-buto,
wash it under running water.
Use your fingertips
to grope each piece
for stray shards of bone,
and don’t...
Is love visceral? Is love political?We elect emotions as tyrantsDictating the rest of our historyWhile I hold your hands gentlyWalking down the parliamentOf desire...
Dusk
The sun bleeds as it dies. Magentas, crimsons, lilacs spread across the sky. “A variant of the riddle goes: A pair of yarn balls / that can reach the heavens.” I skewed the metaphor. You say it doesn’t matter. You like the slant...
Prelude
I’m scared of this masterpiece,
how I painted it so perfectly
with every bit of green and blue, sewed
to a threshold of fragmented doors—
a tapestry of thoughts, where everything is new.
I was drawn
to a morning so sullen.
From the wooden chair in...
Brighter than a thousand suns, / am become Death. Yet, as atoms split, re-configure, they sometimes moderate to re-arrange the glories in the bud, the splendours in the bush. Under a cleansing Heaven, life re-bIooms, charged and changed through a quiet, latent in that self- propelling spirit, there since our isIands’ birth.
Each Sunday I see him
seated on the church steps,
bedraggled clothes, white hair and beard,
as I arrive for the last Mass,
head bowed almost to his knees.
Has he been there all day?
Has he eaten?
Where are the sons he brought
into this world, cared for,
nurtured, loved so...
Why...
(-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 ko’y lumanguyngóy
Sa weightlifting, lagi-lagi’y nagbubuhát
Kung nanalo, sa balita’y hindi salát
Sa Olympics, sa Asian Games, ‘tinatambol.
Ngunit, batid naman nating ‘di...
tiwarik at yukyok
ako’y nanahan
sa kweba ni Inang
tigib ng karimlan
ikasiyam na buwa’y
dumatal
supling ng uniberso’y
iniluwal
Nagkangipi’t
nagkabulbol
Saka naging
suhi
Sa sansina-
pupunang
Nagdadalang-
muhi.