Poetry by Karlo Antonio David | November 6, 2011
Habang ginahalikan mo ang leeg ko
O binatang galing Boston,
Alamin mo
(Kahit hindi ka maka-Tagalog)
Na iyo’ng iyo ang puso
nitong classmate mo sa BM
Mabuang ako, babe
sa mozzarella mong buhok,
sa sugar coated mong eyes,
pati sa bubblegum mong breath.
Poetry by Orlando Sayman Jr. | November 6, 2011
Only her
can stop him
from shooting
his gun.
If he does,
she’ll turn
into a log
hard and
unmoving
in bed,
her touch
rough like
old bark.
The
—
Orlando P. Sayman works as Job-Enabling English Proficiency Monitoring Specialist at Growth for Equity in Mindanao.
Nonfiction by Jondy Arpilleda | October 30, 2011
When I attended my first local creative writing workshop a few years ago, I left the venue discouraged, swearing I’d never join another workshop again. Who wouldn’t be if the panelists unanimously suggested that you toss the pieces you’d painstakingly been working on for over a month or so? But, after a distressed week, that discouragement turned into determination. I revised the ‘junk’ poems and short stories and started with new ones, using the techniques and ideas I’d learned. And a year after that, my new works provided me a ticket to join another workshop – this time, in the regional level. In the second workshop, I was no longer disgruntled by the panelists’ critique because I had preconditioned myself not to mind my works and my ego; well, the good thing was I actually received more good comments than the heart-shattering ones. So, when the Davao Writers Workshop knocked at my doorstep, I was thrilled but not as excited compared to my first because I thought I knew what it was all about and how it’s put together.
But I found out that I was wrong, dead wrong.
Continue reading Dissected, Poked, and Inspired at the Davao Writers Workshop 2011
Editor's Note by Jhoanna Lynn Cruz | October 28, 2011
Davao Writers Workshop Fellows with some members of the Davao Writers Guild:
From left: Dom Cimafranca (standing), (seated) Rene Estremera, Jhoanna Cruz, Aida Rivera Ford, Josie Tejada, Vanessa Doctor, Macario Tiu, and Jondy Arpilleda (standing).
PANELISTS Timothy Montes, Macario Tiu, and Januar Yap
Panelist JOHN BENGAN giving his lecture on “Writing the Vernacular in English”
Fellow JOCY SO-YEUNG of Sun.Star Davao receiving her certificate from Workshop Director JHOANNA CRUZ and Panelist ANTONINO DE VEYRA (also Chair of UP Mindanao Humanities Department)
First Prize winner of the 1ng Satur Apoyon Tigi sa Mubong Sugilanong Binisaya: AL PONCIANO DATU of Cagayan de Oro with Judges MACARIO TIU, DON PAGUSARA, and ARNEL MARDOQUIO. Also in picture is Davao Writers Guild president, JHOANNA CRUZ.
Fiction by Romel Villaflor | October 23, 2011
He had just read in the wall post that she is “In a relationship” and, with that, his night and the next days, weeks, and months were ruined. He went for a walk digesting this information until he ended up in front of a convenience store. He went inside and stood in front of the liquor section, undecided whether to drink brandy, gin, rum, vodka or tequila. After minutes of indecision, he decided on gin chased down with orange-flavored Minute Maid (a mixture that he would be drinking for the next three weeks, consuming maybe his weight in orange juice and gin). While waiting in line at the checkout counter, he couldn’t help overhear the woman in front telling her kids that the condoms were not candies (“but it says cherry flavor,” the kids protested). Then he remembered a line delivered by a character in a movie about condoms being the glass slippers of this generation. As he walked back home, the daylight was receding into darkness; the sky taking the orange and red hues of a popsicle and from the mosques located a few blocks away were amplified reverberations as the worshippers prepared for their evening prayers.
Nonfiction by Jocy So-Yeung | October 16, 2011
A year later
It has been a year of office bliss and without a single visit from our hairy invaders. The school personnel had finally heeded our pleas and detonated some poison packages in the ceiling. Though some unfortunate incidents transpired because of that—such as decomposing rodents stinking up the whole office—in general, Operation Rat Elimination was a success. We thought.
No one really made a head count of the casualties. After leaving the poison and getting rid of a few carcasses, no one probed deeper into the problem. Furthermore, the new high school building was finally finished and teachers moved en masse to a spanking clean, freshly painted and rat-free room. Out of sight, out of mind.
Nonfiction by Dominique Gerald Cimafranca | October 16, 2011
Originally published in the Village Idiot Savant blog.
Satur Apoyon, veteran newsman and Bisaya fiction writer, went missing from his home in Bangkal, Davao City on the morning of Thursday, May 19, 2011. His body was found five days later on Tuesday, May 24, floating off the coast of Governor Generoso, Davao Oriental. Between where he started and where he ended was a distance of 70 km traversing water, or 150 km by the circuitous route over land.
How he got from here to there remains a mystery. What we do know from newspaper reports and recollections:
He left his house that morning at 5AM for his daily constitutional; when he didn’t return an hour later, his family texted friends and searched the neighborhood. A day of fruitless searching went by, and then another.
Rose Palacio, a former colleague of Satur’s at the Philippine News Agency, claimed that she had run into him at Victoria Plaza on Thursday afternoon, but she did not know that he was missing at that time. She kidded the usually well-dressed Satur about his slippers before she boarded her taxi. “O, Satur, nganong gi-dala man nimo imong sala dinhi?” she said. “Okay, okay,” he just answered with a vague smile.
That was the last anyone saw of Satur Apoyon alive.
Continue reading The Mysterious Last Journey of Satur Apoyon
Nonfiction by Jocy So-Yeung | October 9, 2011
A few weeks later, I came back to school to find that a beautiful candle given to me by my students had been attacked, its translucent wax strewn like rough diamonds all over my table, class records, and chair. They have returned. The War on Terror continues. Only the Saturday before, I had gone to school to work, and that time, all was well on my table with nary a pen or paper clip out of place. But on Monday, those rodents gave me a welcome back to work, a surprise I did not appreciate one bit.
Theories again abound. Remembering how rats are supposedly obsessed with revenge, it dawned on me that they must have known I wrote a vicious piece attacking their characters a few weeks ago! They must have heard my co-teacher and I backbiting them. Or, they could’ve heard me telling the school maintenance staff about the absolute need for their eradication.