The Bulldozer and the Backhoe

Poetry by | February 5, 2012

Today, the media excavated the bodies of the noisy words put to silence and buried in a mute lot in Maguindanao. The ghosts of those words are back… — an excerpt, from a nonextant news article

The bulldozer, the backhoe and the men are burying the secrets of
their Masters in an open field, bigger than, um, a soccer.

The men, indifferent like the rest of the neck-held neighborhood. The
bulldozer’s and the backhoe’s hands, however, are trembling as if
they had committed a sin.


Denver Ejem Torres believes that he is both a fabulist and a chronicler, (after reading Pantoja-Hidalgo) through his poetry.  His works have appeared in the 18th INWW Proceedings, The Asia Writes Project, Red River Review (USA), Bisaya (Manila Bulletin) and in Under the Storm: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Poetry.

3 thoughts on “The Bulldozer and the Backhoe”

  1. “…bigger than, um, a soccer.” Clever word choice. Sa akong opinyon, I like how the language doesn’t strive to be poetic.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.