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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sails of a boat that bears the shadows of blossoming antiquity Playful noises coming from the grasp of the lips, Lines withdrawn in the psalms of...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

When I think of leaving, I remember my daughter the night we lost the elections

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...

Flyleaf

Of fairy tales and future fakes, We twist our limbs until they break We force the fit of gown and gold We try to do as we are told But all...

Kalahig

In memory of the hundreds of trash pickers who perished in the garbage slide at the Payatas dumpsite on July 10, 2000 From the skeleton Of...

What passes for us

I see montages evoking regrets, noble architectures dipped in pastels, pale peaches and cream, reticent with their secrets: are the things you tell me after the rain. Together...