Poetry by Ralph Andy Ranario | May 27, 2012
Misubang na ang adlaw,
nagpahiyom pa gihapon ang bulan sa kawanangan.
Ning tip-as sang paglantaw,
Nagahulat sa pagtabon sa kahayag.
—
Ralph Andy Ranario studies Bachelor of Science in Accountancy at Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan.
Poetry by Karla Stefan Singson | May 27, 2012
I know what they’re thinking.
When they look at me,
they automatically assume
that I spent more hours
sitting in front of a computer
rather than get a career
and that probably
I was the kind to always want the
easy ways out of life.
They will start cracking jokes about how
you rescued my family from poverty and how
big my budget was for papaya soaps
and pedicures, which never did a lot
for my “native” look anyway,
this money, which came from you anyway.
When I talk, I’m sure they will listen.
They will listen to every
word, watch out for incorrect prepositions,
interchanged pronouns, or a run-on sentence. Sometimes,
I want to indulge them and say an
unforgivable grammar mistake, but I can’t.
I’m well-read, well-versed and eloquent, fuckyouverymuch.
They’d think that we met in Boracay,
spent a weekend together, then brought you home to introduce you
to my family–they’ll even try to guess which
godforsaken probinsya I must’ve come from
and debate whether electricity or good Internet
connection was running there.
They’d assume you came to see me and
marry me because I will take care of you and be your
official caregiver, and you’d be my ticket out of this third world,
not because we are madly in love.
Maybe they’d even throw in a joke or two
about how we may never fight because whenever
we start to, it would end by you saying, “Green card”.
Honestly, I know all of these.
I know all of these by heart.
I can feel it in my
bones, feel the weight of the words
they so want to speak. I feel
the heat of their stares and the pangs
of their disappointment. And I know,
that every time I seem to prove
them wrong or when we look ridiculously happy, I know
they’re jealous of me.
Yes, they’re jealous of me.
Their own racism is killing them. And that,
when I know, I always want to bask in its glory,
feel the moment; I’ll carry it on my way home,
put it in an airtight bottle,
bathe in it every waking morning.
—
Karla Stefan Singson currently leads her Davao-based events and PR outfit, PREP (PR, Events and Promotions). She also writes for print and online media.
Fiction by Jude Ortega | May 20, 2012
The night-out we were having was crucial, a reunion of sorts, and it would determine if I’d been a fool or just half a fool to have come back to General Santos City.
My cousin Dondon waved goodbye to our grandmother. “Don’t worry, La,” he said. “We’ll take care of your favorite grandson.”
“You better,” Lola said. “I know Ramil is a good boy, and you two are tonto!”
“La, that’s no fair!” Thirdy, another cousin of mine, complained, smiling at Lola. I’m sure it’s the smile he used to charm the local beauty queens. “We’ve never done anything that tainted the name of the Esguerras.”
“Hala,” Lola dismissed us with a wave of her hand, “you kids do whatever you want. You are all old enough.”
Lola closed the opened leaf of the double door, straining a bit in its weight. The large door, made of narra and carved with intricate eagle figures, was a reminder that the big house had once accommodated people who came in droves, when Lolo was still alive and ruling the city as mayor.
Thirdy closed the gate of the family compound. “We thought you’d forgotten Gensan,” he told me. “How long has it been, fifteen years?”
Events by Dominique Gerald Cimafranca | May 17, 2012
Ateneo de Davao University will hold its AdDU Writers Workshop 2012 from May 21 to May 25 at the university’s Jacinto Campus. The workshop is designed to reach out to young writers of Davao City, help them grow in their craft, and lead them to publication in order to give voice to the Mindanao youth. While geared primarily to students of Ateneo de Davao, the workshop also brings in guests from other schools in Davao.
Panelists for the workshop are Dr. Ricardo M. de Ungria (UP-M), Dr. Macario Tiu (PWC), Prof. Jhoanna Lynn Cruz (UP-M), and Don Pagusara, all of the Davao Writers Guild. Workshop director is Dominique Gerald Cimafranca.
The fellows for the workshop are:
Carl Christian T. Agunod
Rosanna Aliviado
Madel Catre
Raizza Mae D. Cinco
Vincent Carlo Cuzon
Karen Kae F. Dicdican
Mary Caryl Dichosa
Alexandra Victoria A. Eñeco
Kristine Angelique O. Falgui
Alfedo Carlos Montecillo
Jamille Peliña
Benrich Baysa Tan
Gracielle Deanne B. Tubera
John Rey A. Aleria (UIC)
Peachy Cleo F. Dehino (UIC)
Armando Fenequito, Jr. (USEP)
Farah Aimee S. Virador (USEP)
Opening ceremonies for the workshop will be at 9:30AM on Monday, May 21, at F513 of the Finster Building of the Ateneo de Davao University. Mrs. Aida Rivera-Ford, founder of the Ford Academy of the Arts and former chair of the Humanities Division of Ateneo de Davao, will be the keynote speaker during the opening ceremonies.
The workshop is an annual event funded entirely by Ateneo de Davao University. It is held with the assistance of the Davao Writers Guild.
Poetry by Jayson Parba | May 6, 2012
Niagi ang kuwarenta minutos
Apan ang bus dili mo-isbog.
Ang akong tupad nga mga Hapon
Mikuhas ilang earphone,
Daw naminaw ug tukar o di ba balita,
Napungot kay ang mga sakyanan
Sa Beretania dili gasibog.
Sa akong atbang, dunay duha
Ka Amerkanang sigeg tan-aw
Sa ilang relo, dala yam-id
Kon ang bus mo-irog lag diyotay.
Sa way dugay, adunay mga nanganaug
Nga daw samas sundalong samdan.
Ug wa ko hipugngi ang pahiyom
Nga naumol sa akong mga ngabil
Sa dihang nikidlap sa kong panumdoman
Ang akong gigikanan.
—
Jayson Parba is currently enjoying his Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship (FLTA) Program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He comes from Cagayan de Oro City and teaches literature and ESL courses at Capitol University.
Fiction by Dave Carl Cutler | May 6, 2012
We have all your pens. Every single pen that you purchased and lost is now in our possession. The black ones, the blue ones, the red ones, the new ones, the old ones, the empty ones, the ones with bite marks, the ones that you think are in your bag, the ones that are important to you, and the ones that you’ve forgotten. We’ve got them all.
We keep them in a dark room somewhere between nowhere and everywhere. It’s an odd room now that we think about it. It is dimly lit by faint patches of sunlight that would fade from one spot then illuminate in another. The smell of dry ink and rusted pen-points pollutes the air and makes living here a pain. The sounds of pens being stored and sorted reverberate throughout the entire room, giving a rhythmic tick to the place that we find endearing. And there’s an unusual pewter-colored fog that would hover over an empty mahogany stool. All these make up the peculiarity of room. The room where we keep all your pens.
Fiction by Dave Carl Cutler | May 6, 2012
“Dino, did you know that there’s some really good toast served in a mysterious island somewhere around Samal? It’s rumored to be the greatest dish of toast ever toasted. One hell of a breakfast!”
“Rex, dude, are you serious? That sounds seriously interesting. The world’s best toast, huh? How do we get there? Is there like a secret boat that will take us there?”
“No. We’ll have to swim.”
“Swim? To Samal? From Davao? Fart yeah! How do we recognize the island though?”
“It breathes fire. I don’t think it’ll be that hard to miss.”
“Should we go now? I mean it is 2 am.”
“No better time than the present, bro.”
Nonfiction by Rowena Rose Lee | April 29, 2012
Dear Ms. Long Lean Limbs,
Right off the bat, I would like to say that I have this unwavering need to decline your friend request on this social network site that we both subscribe to. For one thing, I have no idea who you are. At the same time, I doubt it very much that you know anything about me at all.
The truth is: before I saw your friend request in my message box, I was living a boring virtual and real life existence. I was actually pretending that the articles I was writing about would somehow change world views and rewrite history, despite the fact that my client had limited my online literary expertise to: how to cure athlete’s foot, and how to avoid smelly armpits, and how to eliminate other yeast-friendly environments on the human body.