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Poetry

Naked

I’ll wear nothingbut my trembling desirethe wild beat of my pulsethe lingering whispers of my past. I’ll wear nothingbut the ache of my lost love the sweet sigh of my first joy The ecstatic cry of happiness. I’ll wear nothing but the fire in my eyesnaked in your...

Grandma

Her hands quiver from sustained pressing of the beads. When her voice starts to rise, the light of the kerosene lamp amplifies from an entirely lambent glow, illuminating the details of her room. Mound of frass and dead winged ants on the altar; archaic cross nailed askew on a bole. Might these, however...

Inverted Horizons

The sea and the sky Swap their eternities The waves with the clouds And everywhere Fishes fly birds swim Farmers cast seines Fishers sow seeds Waterways counterflow Waterfalls go into reverse All of this unbeknown To Siri Alexa and Cortana.

TWO POEMS ON FATHERHOOD

Shoes Paper cutouts folded to fit my back pocket. I carry them along through bus ride and train tracks. I’ll be gone for a few hours. My daughters look forward to this annual ritual. Now they need the stitch and leather of a tougher kind. Last year’s is now a hole...

What a Child Cannot Learn from Books

When you wound a leather sofa with the forbidden razor blade, you see no cut but a blooming, cotton pulp breaches skin, first peeps and bursts out almost in delight. When you try to punch through a pane in a capiz window, you will be awed by how something so...

The Bullet Wakes from Its Cruel Shell

I dance through air with a deadly grace. Yet mourn the lives I cannot replace. Once a vessel of power, now burdened with guilt, I pierced through dreams, where innocence wilt. A mother's love fades into the night, Leaving children alone, lost in their light. A father’s laugh, now...

Random Pickings

Grandma

Her hands quiver from sustained pressing of the beads. When her voice starts to rise, the light of the kerosene lamp amplifies from an entirely lambent glow, illuminating the...

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...

My only sin

Nothing in my garden of chrysanthemum can make me smile not the clutch of winged Monarchs perched on my rosals, neither fishbones nor the trees I had long since abandoned the...

Habilin

Kumuha ka lang nang sapat. Kung sobra, 'wag ibulagsak. Sapagkat may taong salat Sa tira ay nagagalak. Paliwanag: Ito ay isang dalit sapagkat ang sukat ay wawaluhin at...