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Poetry

Sisyphus, Rockstar

One last time, my forgotten friend, poise your calloused hands and dig your battered heels into the dirt. Left behind by the new world. The others, glam dolls and pulpit idols, have all long gone. I watch as you reach the top, as a slow, hazy blues chord from a...

Another War

I was seven a war marred my hometown Tíyo and the fishermen soldiers the deep sea battlefield a compound of the sea’s little bones of sable sands in a wicked bottle their arsenal made the Earth mumbled in tremulous waves the heavens bled scales of shattered souls to the flesh of my innocence.

Three Poems Before 2025

2024 What do you want to say to a year yet to explain itself? The days are heaving, the hours a diary made meaningful with our ghosts: gray, tenuous, prone to our forgetting. Just tell me something new. Or describe to me freedom as an animal. Show me skin moistened by worship, waterfalls like...

Una oda a la música

May this poem be heard as a testament of Amorsolo’s “History of Philippine Music” and his artistry. Winds already touched the glistening sails of a boat that bears the shadows of blossoming antiquity Playful noises coming from the grasp of the lips, Lines withdrawn in the psalms of...

Cinnamon Rolls

A covenant was made. You trod on my soil. You breathed my air. Here, tonight, I am having dinner. The hall would have fit in Many exuberant guests, But I only see myself And my toddler’s chair. The table is set. Cutleries in their neat order. I sniff the folded serviette. It is your very...

Retrograde

The force of fate couldn’t fight for us.Venus showed me the way to youjust as I pointed her and the Moonfor you to gaze.He smiled down on us, mockingwith his crescent lips, whitened teeth. Time runs backas our shared memories.

Random Pickings

After Reading Hemingway’s “Clean, Well-lighted Place” (For Joel Toledo and the Bayaws)

Soon it will be like us. Eighty-year-old men Being refused another round of beersWaiters eager to go home to their wives.Assuming we reach old ageWith...

Visitors

By Sigrid Gayangos   When nights simmered like a lazy summer day, and months went on without rain, the ancient ones of Samboangan swim up to the shore, take...

THE CALLING OF ST. MATTHEW

In Harmony with Caravaggio Five men sit around a tablewhile two stand at the extreme right.How strange, those seated havefoppish hats, embroidered and brocadedshirts, tight...

While I Still Can

Let me, please I beg of you Let me catch the whiff of fresh air Against my cheeks The first ray of sunshine As new day breaks As it kisses...