Fishy

Fiction by | July 4, 2010


The day Doy left with his motorbike, our little white cat Fishy began mewling on the front yard. She had lost half of her weight and her eyes were always watery and flaky. She would not eat or drink and her breathing was getting heavier day after day. I didn’t know what happened to her. Had she eaten something? Did our tomcat Porky rape her? I didn’t know. All I knew was she was dying.

Doy found her five months ago together with Pating the day he showed up with his motorbike. They were in a box just out of the gate and he carried them up to my apartment. Doy had said before that he had a surprise for me. I thought it was the kittens, but it turned out to be the bike. He told me how he tricked his old man into buying him that shiny black bike. He promised me that he would take me anywhere with his bike, helmets off, from the beaches of Mati to the mountains of Cotabato. But I liked the cats better.

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Uncle Gaspar takes a wife

Fiction by | June 27, 2010


Growing up as I did in our little barrio of Kauswagan, I only knew of Uncle Gaspar through the balikbayan box of chocolates, cigarettes, wine, and small appliances he sent every Christmas. Uncle Gaspar worked as a truck driver in Saudi, you see, together with his brother, my Uncle Diosdado. In the five years he was away, he sent money to Lola Estella to build a house and to buy a farm lot.

I always suspected that Uncle Gaspar was a mama’s boy. Mama said that even if he was naughty, Lola had always given him special attention. With Uncle Gaspar far away, Lola Estella would sometimes take out the photo album she kept in the aparador of their house. She showed us pictures of Uncle Gaspar together with Arabs in long, white gowns and equally long headscarves. Sometimes, the pictures were of Uncle Gaspar playing cards with other Filipino workers.

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Your Breakup Kiss

Poetry by | June 27, 2010

Is between my lips and yours
And the rain that bathes us
Unprepared like your parting.
This time, the heat
And prick of fondness is gone.
Bitter like your lipstick
Marking its trace with pain, provoked
By the scent of your breath inducing
Sting to my chest, while my pulse ticks
Weak like my heartbeat. Maybe
Because they too sense that
Here in the street,
Where we first met and kissed,
You will soon leave me
Alone with the sky weeping
Over your footsteps, heavy
As the fall of rain creating
Ripples on this puddled concrete
Like how tears will drop, away from me.

—
Gino Dolorzo studies at Xavier University – Ateneo de Cagayan.

Loneliness

Poetry by | June 27, 2010

you sink in and inhale my hair
the smell of after-a-kiss cigarette smoke
welcomes you to a mistake.
my arms adore you
love you to the last scar.
in loneliness, anyone staying over will be just fine.
yet in love, in love i’m alone.

i live in your confusing cycle
and you live in your world-
of smokes, liquor, and satisfaction.
i bend to your expectation
until i snap, crack, and break-
into your arms.
bracing for jealousy
uncertainty,
and the end.

I Really Just Want to Write

Nonfiction by | June 20, 2010

I’ve always said it: I just want to write. Some of my classmates in Creative Writing were born to become professors passing on their knowledge to the next generation of students, others were born to edit, to analyze other writers’ works, and to put together papers that become chapters of textbooks. I firmly believe that my niche in this world belongs to writing. And so I became a web content writer.

But the life of a web content writer is not as glamorous as it sounds. I can assure you, the pay is just as bad. On the other hand, I encounter situations my former classmates do not.

In my quest for a better paying job and in the misguided belief that I needed to step up my game, I accepted online editing work for a company based in the United Arab Emirates.

My new employer was the head of human resources of a drilling company. As to what the company was drilling, I could only venture guesses: oil? water? sewage? Sensitive documents never came my way, but what editing work that did kept me busy for days on end.

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149 Minutes

Nonfiction by | June 13, 2010

Nervous, I inserted my ballot into the PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scanner) machine. I was nervous because the PCOS might reject my ballot like it did to the woman’s before me. She had to insert it six times before her ballot was counted. Less than a minute passed, and the words, “Congratulations! Your vote has been counted” appeared. I sighed. I was done.

What the COMELEC (Commission on Elections) said was really true. With the automated elections, the counting of the ballots would no longer take a long time, unlike the manual elections. But it’s too early to celebrate. Lest we forget, the searching of polling precincts, the lining up—all that, too, is part of the elections. And there are so many things that can be said of them. So many, in fact, that I don’t know where to begin.

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Saturday Soul Searcher

Fiction by | June 13, 2010

Elsa smoothed her hair as she got to the university entrance. A glance at her watch showed it was 4:55. Just in time for her regular 5pm Saturday mass. It was actually an anticipated Sunday mass. She made it a habit to attend this schedule to allow her to loll in bed the whole Sunday while watching TV or DVD’s. Given the possibility that the priest might give a long homily, she would be out of here by around 6:15. Then she would take a tricycle ride and still catch up with her favorite TV program on showbiz news.

But the chapel seemed full as she came near it. Definitely, this was not her day to show off her fashionable get-up to full advantage. In the past, she would usually walk down the center aisle and head towards the front seat near the altar, her head held high. Reluctantly, Elsa walked towards one of those plastic chairs set right outside the chapel’s door. She found a corner seat beside a small artificial pond. She glanced furtively to her right. Good, there was still an empty seat between her and the other churchgoers. She was about to place her small bag there when a young girl hurriedly sat down.

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A Million Feet Scurry

Poetry by | June 6, 2010

inspired by “Curtain,” mixed media on canvas by Ivan Macarambon

It’s the millipede burrowing through the threads of a rug
that did it. A sign of wet weather, I’ve seen one or two
this afternoon, racing down the elbow of wall
and floor, the grout between tiles its tracks.
Where are they heading, punctual
little trains heading for a wreck under my heels,
or against the wall under the handle of a broom,
little, black, rusty nails bent in the middle
like a sloppy strike from an untried wrist?
Appointments wait in cold corners,
behind toilets, the inevitable,

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