Dark Pink Harvest

Poetry by | March 2, 2008

A grandmother’s remembrances of last summer

Peering through a picture window
I saw pastel-hued balloons float in the air
anchored to chairs built so low
uprooted children are ill-fitted sitting there.
I gaze at you and I standing opposite ends of a rainbow.
I am writing history.
You are certain
in this country
there is a treasure of stories to know.
You finally understood why you had to go.
Sipping sambong in a screened porch
embraced by life-filling green,
alone I stare at your raiment of dark pink torch
more lovely than I can ever imagine.

To His Coy Seatmate

Poetry by | February 17, 2008

(After Cecille Laverne dela Cruz)

 |          |
 |          |
 |          |
 |          |
 A          B

Two parallel lines, fated never to meet in a two dimensional plane.
If you place line A
to compliment line B,
you’ll end up with a telephone pole.
Santa Claus flies to all children,
from North to South, good and bad to give
candies and charcoals – all around the magnetic pole.
If you’ll allow me,
let me talk you into a vision
where the world melts like chocolate
and every day will become Christmas day. Things
will fly that every concept is nothing but good and good.
I’ll even let you come to play in Santa’s factory.
Come, then.
I’ll talk my tongue onto your pole.

Ethnicity and the Choreographer

Nonfiction by | February 17, 2008

In transforming ethnic dance to neo-ethnic, it is a must to first align the mind to the fact that the creation of a new work, even though ethnic inspired, is simply that—a creation. And, since it is to be neo-ethnic, its intention as an artwork should pay tribute to the source of origin.

Authentic ethnic dance loses its magic when performed away from its natural environment. Its very essence is endangered when it is haphazardly pulled out by its roots and the dance, at its purest form, is brought to stages, streets, basketball courts and gymnasiums in urban settings. The dances are often made to wear colorful sequined costumes and, at times, even pretend to be the real thing.

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A Love (Triangle) Story

Fiction by | February 17, 2008

When I first met Charlie at a young writers’ summer conference in Baguio, he and Winston had already been the best of friends. This was not surprising, because both of them came from the same town in Pangasinan and had gone to school together – from elementary to college. Charlie’s mom and Winston’s mom were best friends in college. Charlie and Winston were both first-born. So it was sort of natural they would be close to each other.

Charlie was a poet, Winston a fictionist, and both had been hailed as “the newest stars in the literary firmament,” as a campus review would put it. Both of them belonged to the exclusive Inner Circle, a select group of campus writers in the university. Charlie looked like a young Dylan Thomas (who happened to be his favorite poet): somewhat pouting lips and curly locks tumbling down forehead and nape. He was lean, fair and frail-looking. His eyes were his best features: saucer-shaped and brooding, dark with secret passions and what he would quote as “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Winston was completely different. He was dark and husky, his kinky hair close-cropped, a crystal stud sparkling on his left ear. He was almost a head taller than Charlie. From a distance, they would look like a man and a woman together: a striking pair.

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because e.e. cummings said

Poetry by | February 10, 2008

e.e. cummings said
since feelings are first
we really shouldn’t bother with the syntax of things

allow my verbs to crash and spin
let my nouns collide with other nouns
allow my modifiers to dangle and get misplaced
let my words multiply and fly
allow my sentences to fall and rise

towards you
into you

but

we really shouldn’t bother with the syntax of things
since feelings are first
e.e. cummings said

After Eden

Poetry by | February 10, 2008

They both bear the burden of the fruit.
Each day they toil in this marketplace
steaming in the morning heat, here
where there are too many ways to know
good and evil, life and death.

His strong back strains under the heavy basket,
her arms keep steady as she eases the weight.
It does not matter now whose wrong it was,
why each drop of sweetness comes from pain.
Grace still fills the smallest gestures of being.

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In the Car that Straddled Me and Father

Fiction by | February 10, 2008

Father and I were in the purple car handed to him for the nth time; where n is equals to the infinity of the fathers who drove their daughters to the JS Prom. For years, the tinted windows of the car and the strangulating seatbelt have created an artificial intimacy—between me and the world outside the car, and him.

The suffocating airconditioner made the car windows misty, and I traced escape holes with my thin fingers. The traces made me recall my tongue, carefully parting the hairs of his stiffening chest that night we lay awake.

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