The Philippines Graphic Reader
The first and only magazine on Philippine literature in English
LET YOUR SHORT STORY OR POEM SHINE!
Philippines Graphic Reader
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...
Literature
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...
Fiction
House of Leaves
“A week ago, just before you arrived, DongJosé,” my grandfather was telling me in between locomotive puffs from his rolled lomboy cigar. “A damn...
Literature
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...
Fiction
The One-Night Stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair
Maribel glanced at her plane seat, grateful that she had the aisle seat and only one seat beside her. Her seat mate was a...
Philippines Graphic Reader
One Little Less
One little less of me —
a hand, an awe, a feather falling free.
one little much an eye; one too little, still more
to be.
One too...
Fiction
The Desert
Roel alighted the taxi he took from Ulaanbaatar’s train station to his guest house. He immediately felt the biting chill of the city’s subzero...
Philippines Graphic Reader
Washout
I
So in a fit of righteous anger
I washed the pots pans
plates bowls knives spoons glasses
even cleaned the kitchen sink and the drawers,
which I haven’t...
Fiction
Threads of Courage
The night the war reached Cebu, Maria woke to the sound of distant explosions. It was April 1942 and she had just turned fourteen...
Philippines Graphic Reader
Encounter at the S.C. Field
Mornings do not rise
Above this leafy prison.
Time hangs midnoon
Over sharp sugarcane leaves,
Striking against the downpour
Of cruel sunrays.
All the sounds enclosing
Are the rustle of the...
Fiction
WHERE FLOWERS BLOOM
Today is the last Friday of March, and it is stifling hot over here on the island, its jungle mountains overlooking the Pacific seaboard....
Philippines Graphic Reader
Price of a Dream
“You’re free to dream,” is what’s often heard
For wishful thinking seems to be done daily
And nobody had to pay a dime to keep it...
Fiction
An Affair to Remember
Monsignor Sullivan was seated at his glass-topped desk, the letter from Vikings Cruise on a linen stationery before him. Should he take up the...
Philippines Graphic Reader
Sometimes, I Am the Leaves
Aimless and astray—“I won’t go far”But most times, I am lost in the intricate streets and manmade blocks
Not knowing the way back to your...
Fiction
The Decision
Guido hands the large envelope to Bea. She accepts it with two hands, but he doesn’t let go of it, suddenly hesitant. She looks...
Philippines Graphic Reader
Nautilus
I walked barefoot on the Pacific beach,the sand a chill, the sun a dying coal.Waves whispered secrets to the rocks,and there it was—a spiral...
