Month: January 2024

First Time

Fiction by | January 29, 2024

It’s forty minutes past three in the morning. You are wide awake. The woman, you just slept with for the first time, is fast asleep. You cannot sleep, not even in a half-sober state. You light a cigarette and stare at the window. Outside, you hear the rustle from the foliage of Molave. Crickets throughout the field, from Mount Pangasugan to Lagolago, down to your boarding house in Patag are the night’s ambient sound. Occasionally, you hear motorcycles from the main road. Oh, those kompadres. Have they not had enough Emperador, yet? It’s funny how after a wild freshmen fellowship party, Baybay becomes quite—awfully quiet—you think. You look at the woman in your bed. What was her name? You do not remember. Was she Mike’s friend? Or maybe Elaine’s? Who is she? You eagerly attempt to recall. You remember, not her name, no. But the woman, the one at home, her name. Yes, her, the one whom you first planned to do it with for the first time. The image of her flashes in front of you, as if she was somewhere out in the cogon field, looking, not at you, but at this beautiful sky.
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Distância

Poetry by | January 29, 2024

On a bed of grass,
I swallow this scene:
The sky is an ocean.
The clouds, sailing across
the canvas. I drown its white
spaces in shades of blue.

You called it skygazing,
a word that rolls on my tongue
like candy with a sour aftertaste.
I lift the canvas to the heavens
and watch it lodge
perfectly into place.

Then the scene changes:
The sun starts to retreat,
hours turn to minutes
turn to seconds turn to
an oil spill across the horizon,
fishes shimmering in moonlight.

I sink my brush again
and begin to repaint history.
My hands, cold in your absence.
My eyes follow the colors
rowing back and forth,
a lullaby calming the tides.

That night,
I look up once more
and echo your name,
hoping that the waves in the sky
would carry my voice
back to your shores.

Raphael Salise is a Creative Writing graduate from the University of the Philippines Mindanao. He likes to read poems, short stories, and essays by Filipino writers as he someday aspires to become successful like them. Raph is currently taking up Law at Ateneo de Davao University.

talc

Poetry by | January 22, 2024

last night, at 2 am,
i was going through my dressing table
looking for something to
soothe my shaved legs with
when i found a bottle
of your favorite talcum powder—
the one that smelled like jasmine, sakura, and freshly bathed babies.

how you loved patting it all over your face until it made you look like a clown,
how i knew that you were there
the moment its powdery floral scent
hit my nostrils
and you would greet me with the excited
smile of an elderly woman
convinced that her dead mother
is alive and waiting for her outside.

i remember the three small packs of biscuits that you innocently gave me as a “christmas gift” last year not knowing that it would be our last.

the foldable umbrellas you would take with you everywhere—rain or shine.

the piggyback rides on the way home from school back when i was four, just because you wanted to.

grief is a bottle of talcum powder long past its expiration date that still brings back memories of the scent it used to have.

i stare at the white plastic bottle. its twistable pink cap. the dark blue text against its white label.

and in the 2 am silence of my room,
i wait for God to tell me
that you’re up there laughing
with a basket of freshly
picked flowers in your hands,

that a life lost is not ashes to the ground.

but i hear nothing—and the enormity of it swallows me whole for the first time.

Gabrielle Marie Felio is a BS Psychology graduate who finds solace in embracing the rawness of life through literature.

Pagmata

Poetry by | January 22, 2024

Ang hunghong sa hangin
Ang lagubo sa daplin
Ang bagnos sa kahoy
Pahuway sa kahawoy

Ang tugnaw sa ngitngit
Ang init sa gunit
Ang hapyod sa awit
Paglaum sa hagit

Ang sidlak sa adlaw
Ang gabon sa bugnaw
Ang pahiyom sa bata
Kuhit sa pagmata

Mubangon, mutindog
Barugan ang tinuod
Isa ra ang kinabuhi
Daug, dili pildi

Ria Bianca R. Caangay is a faculty of Ateneo de Davao University. She is a graduate of Doctor of Philosophy in Education major in Applied Linguistics.

Gugmang Dili Magsaba

Poetry by | January 8, 2024

Naminhod na ang akong kamot
sa sige’g hinuktok diri sa bentana,
nag-atang nga modayag ang panganod
ug makit-an na pod tika.
Gapaminaw sa lusok-uwan nga
nagdulot sa atop diri sa amo,
murag tambol nga dili muhunong
hantod sa mabungol ko.
naghuwat ko nga makalakaw
ug muadto sa lugar kon asa ka,
Unta dili ra ko nimo makit-an
kay magpuyo ra ko diri sa lingkoranan.

Paminawon ra tika mustorya,
motutok ra sa imo pirmi,
ubanan ka bisan pag sa banyo
kon mangihi ug magpagwapa
kay kana may hangyo nimo.
Ug kinsa man pud ko para mudili?
Kon muhinay ang dagan sa oras
memoryahon pud nako ang tanan
sa imo, murag exam nga lisod kaayo,
kay basig ugma wala na ka
ug mawala na pud kining gibati
para sa imoha.

Nag-awas na sa kadaghan ang libro
nga akong nabasahan ug basahunon
aron malumos ko ug dili makadungog
sa kabanha sa kalibutan
ug kining kalibutan dili maghuwat
sa ato; dili maminaw ug mahilom.
Apan kining imong suwat ra jud
ang pagdait sa tanang saba,
maong panggaon na lang nako
kining dughan nga dili mahimutang
para nimo
kay sa imo ra ko kasinati og kalinaw
ug kalipay.

Dili jod dapat ni nimo mabatian
kining akong gitaguan nga gugma
kay basin mohawa ka
mabilin ko dinhi nga nag-inusara.

Kay dili man tanang gugma angay ipagawas,
mosuwat na lang pud ko para kanimo
niining kun-ot nga papel nga gigisi
gikan sa notbok nga humot pa’g NBS.
Ako kining itago sa pinakasuok
sa akong pitaka ug isuksok sa bolsa
aron dili mawagtang, makuha sa uban
sama sa akong gugma nga para sa imoha
ug saimoha ra.

Allaiza Gerodiaz is from Davao City. She is a BA English (Creative Writing) student in University of the Philippines Mindanao.

Thin Skins in Short Supply

Nonfiction by | January 1, 2024

Last January, I bought three onions for 75 pesos. It’s known that they can make people cry. Now, they can break hearts, too.

We started 2023 with a shortage in full swing. It’s a crisis, you might say. We have those all the time. True, but this is a different kind of crisis. This isn’t a state of emergency declared when a typhoon floods your house. This isn’t the kind of threat that happens when men with guns show up unexpectedly, or when you see the face of a friend on the police’s wanted poster for alleged charges of attempted murder. We learn to expect these things when the language of justice is money. It says what’s right and what’s red.

This crisis is the kind that creeps up on your windows or darts across your kitchen floor. It’s quiet, insidious. The worst kind. You go about your chores, go to work, grate your fingertips on a keyboard for chump change. You don’t notice it until it’s staring you in the face. By then, it’s too late.

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Campsite

Poetry by | January 1, 2024

The sun paints the sky vermillion

like a ball of fire. What a kingdom

of hefty trunks and waters rippling

with every stroke of limbs. To whom

do I owe the pleasure of this escapism,

rank of moisture and earth? Scorched

by mountain heat, bathed in the cold.

What a long haul, this sky-high dream,

this hustling body, the ache within the

flesh breaking my soul in two, from the

morning till midnight. I am resurrected

out of dust and dirt, soft and fresh, like

the beating of a newborn’s heart. I am

free like footsteps on the loose. Like a

lake that can thrive endlessly, overflow,

or replenish. Should I live from now on,

aiming to top greater heights in my life?

Maybelline Bedolido is from Mati City, Davao Oriental. She studies BA English (Creative Writing) at the University of the Philippines Mindanao.