Tag: Aleah Bantas

Ang distansya sa pagitan ng babae at baril
ay pinananatili ang diwa at igting
ng himagsikan at labada.
Siya ang rebolusyon ng pag-aalimpuyo ng mga kalan;
ang sigaw ng katipunan.

Ang pagitan ng babae at bibig ng makata
ay laway at tinta—
minsan, bala ng colt at asin.

Ang pagitan ng pag-ibig at babae
ay hindi bugbog at pasa,
hindi birhen at imahen
kundi ang baybay at himig ng apoy
at hindi ang bigat ng taludtod
na nakakahon sa dibdib
ng bayang paulit-ulit na sinusunog
ngunit ayaw maging abo.

Bago ang huling bigwas
ng buwayang nakakulong sa kusina.
Ang kanyang katawan ay kanya.
Sa sigalot ng karit at bigkis ng ani. 

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Aleah Sulaiman Bantas is a queer Maguindanaon writer who hails from the floodplains of Datu Paglas, Maguindanao del Sur. A fellow of the SOX Writers Workshop (2025), her works have appeared in the Bangsamoro Literary Review, Dagmay, and SunStar Davao. Her zines and poetry anthologies have been published under Tridax Zine, Cotabato Literary Circle, and the Socsksargen Writers Collective. She is currently studying at the University of Southern Mindanao.

 

In the back of Sir Mojamel’s classroom
I was ten fingers and four
if I count it right
there was a tree,
if it existed at all, I may be wrong but
one thing I hold is this:

why the big acacia tree
doesn’t bloom the same way
scorpions molt
underneath its bark anymore?
I asked my brother and he said
breathing a memory:

“Mana daman kayu lu”

the flowers once white,
sifted tufts opening against the heat.

why is nostalgia
the easiest to come back to
and the hardest thing
to forget?

maybe the only thing left of this
is my inching away to the body—
my body, the grammar lessons.

Sir Mojamel’s distant classroom,
where the hurt lingers best,
like a scab of wound coercing into an itch
you could never scratch enough.

but I could be wrong.

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Aleah Sulaiman Bantas, 20, is a Maguindanaon writer and is currently pursuing Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in Social Studies at the University of Southern Mindanao. A creative nonfiction fellow at the 2025 SOX Writers Workshop, her work has also appeared in the Bangsamoro Literary Review. She writes about love, queerness, memory, and the shared struggles of the masses, drawing from both her cultural roots and contemporary realities.