Tag: Michael John Otanes

i.

There is a black hole
within you, at the event horizon
of which is where your mind

resides, as a death’s-head
hawk-moth to
a colossal fire whirl.

---

Devoured tablets, as well as
offered kind words
and acts, light the surface.

Stale eyes wrench away
from licking infinite distances.
Ears gulp sounds.

Stapled lips split
into a grin. The thought
of ashes ceases.

---

The space-time at the event
horizon curves into
itself, and all forms of light

that are sponged up
in this black hole’s vicinity
orbits the curvature.

---

The gravity is so strong
that the resurrected
crust’s brevity becomes quicker

than a sneeze. How can
I escape this dark prison?
you might ask.

 

ii.

In 1974, Hawking
discovered that black holes
slowly emit radiation.

---

The tail can be untangled
from the snake’s mouth.
The black hole’s

gravitational pull
is inversely contingent
to its mass.

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Michael John Otanes is a writer based in General Santos City. His works have appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Rappler, Philippines Graphic, and Santelmo 3, among many others. He was also a fellow of the 2018 Davao Writers Workshop, the 61st Silliman University National Writers Workshop, and the 30th Iligan National Writers Workshop.

i. Ecological Naïveté

It was on our fifth day in Galapagos
that my mother, a biologist, and I
first caught sight of a flock of flight-
less cormorants in the north western coast
of Isabela, at a thorn-scrub land-
scape at the side of a slippery slope,
swathed with cat’s-claw bushes and
thin-leafed daisies. In
front of them, those birds: a young
man hefting a massive rock, his sweat-slick
forehead glistening under the sun.
The birds’ wings, at this, did not kiss
the scorching equatorial sky;
they remained still as the tree-covered hills
behind them. Even their eyes merely slid
past him languidly, over at
the primordial landscape,
where other endemic species resided.
The birds’ wings echoed their own eyes.

ii. Evolution of Flightlessness

Terrestrial mammalian predators’
nonexistence in the islands of Galapagos
had undressed flightless cormorants’
vulnerability millions of years ago,
said my mother years before we went
to that place. Those birds,
therefore, had grown downright
accustomed in the stretches of coastline
and in the fluorescent-blue sea,
where they foraged for fish
and other aquatic organisms,
without dread of being devoured.
In the long run, their wings
had morphed into stubby garments
that were only utilized as
an armor to battle the bone-
chilling ocean of the archipelago.

iii. Ode to the Flightless Cormorants

The isolation bubble of Galapagos,
O flightless cormorants, had already burst,
pierced by the thirst of humans
for dreamscape, their presence,
like waves, lapping on the archipelago
every once in a while. You don’t swim
against the current. In truth,
danger to you has been a wind.
This what you deem as wind,
however, has magnitudes.
And when its strength slaps the sea,
tidal waves—say, bird hunters—
can wipe you all out. Start flapping
your wings, flightless cormorants.
Metamorphose them into massive ones.
The cloud-thronged sky is a place
where waves can’t reach you.
Sail through it. I would love to see
you there enacting a metaphor,
beside the other flying species,
rather than in a book in which you are
a mere history—an aftermath
which will occur if those waves
devour your existence whole.

 

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Michael John Otanes, 25, was born and raised in General Santos City, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in English at Mindanao State University. He was a fellow for Poetry in the 2018 Davao Writers Workshop.

after Carel Fabritius’s The Goldfinch (c.1654)

Chained to the feedbox
That is nailed against the day-
Light-plastered, unadorned,

Yellow wall, the goldfinch
Looks out at us, its grave
Gaze unflinching as a hill.

See the sun’s glare?
It is the grin stretched across
The face. The chain, the black-

Obsidian, rain-swollen
Clouds shrouded at the crys-
Talline sky. This taut knot

Is sewn on Earth’s palm.
You are within this world’s
Grasp. You, too, are the bird.

 

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Michael John Otanes, 24, was born and raised in General Santos City, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in English at Mindanao State University. He is a fellow for Poetry in the 2018 Davao Writers Workshop.