F YEAH FILIPINO POETRY

WE ARE ALIVE AND WELL poems by filipino writers, wherever, whenever, whoever they may be. for submission inquiries, hit us up in our askbox!

[leonaesque]

So This Is Loneliness

long strand of curly black pubic hair, blocking water from drain

                           & harvested

from a girl-like-field, some rice switched bones, and a muscle where i let it grow out & grow past my thighs, past

my wet crevices, my indoor flesh, where i wanted, when i wanted to twist it all back into a sweet, meaty bun  

to eat, if i were starving, or perhaps, wanting, deprived from, more than i should, then i could, braid myself an extra limb. wouldn’t that be hilarious.

                                                                    *               if a hand, it would stroke me, right between my shit pleasure slice.                                            if a leg, it would trudge through thrice as fast the fuzz of green i keep mistaking for the forest, but is only actually, a garden. my garden.

i sit there, quiet sometimes. my bushes

                           cut in the shape of a sagging                                                     white dress.                                                                       * i am a widower of sorts. divorced from the prospect of growing old, whenever i hear your voice                 calling, but it is not your voice it is my mother’s, and your mother’s, and someone’s mother’s flowers strewn over the aisle & beyond, the altar             & i catch myself walking & walking & walking my third arm guiding me by the pews while i am holding up, holding myself together, the two other handsful of white and whiter, present & future ash –                                                                     *

                                                    no? i am not crying. i am not gasping. the lights are still,                                                                                                                  wherever you are.

                                                           look. we have made it.  toweled ourselves dry.

                        look.  

             the bathtub was only meant              to bleed kind.

So This Is Loneliness (published in SOFTBLOW, 11/1/17)  ||  by elise ofilada 

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

Elegy for the Lost Minutes

The woman with the wheelchair-bound husband is losing kindness in front of the elevators. We are standing in the car she has been waiting for for what seems like hours. We are thinking of inconsequential things – sandwich, cookies, coffee, weekend – clutching our wallets close to our chests, while the woman holds what’s left of her kindness on the palm of her hand and lets it go. I thought patients are priority here, she screams the moment the doors open, and the elevator attendant offers her apologies, a kindness the size of a thimble. We are only capable of a little kindness: breakfast served promptly at seven in the morning, a window seat offered during the bus ride home. A touch of the hand, to signify commiseration. The woman looks at us with contempt. All of you people can walk, she says. Our hands are empty. Here are our legs, we wanted to say. But we are not kind enough.

Eliza Victoria

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

You Must Recall Your Past Lives

after Wallace Stevens Once you were cedar, then once you were a blackbird, & you were sitting on the limbs of what once you were. Once you were snow falling, then the river into which you fell. Once by the river, you were one of these thin men, then another of them, until you were all of them at once. Then once you were the only woman these men think of, only to be all the women all men once thought of. But once you were not thinking at all: you were a blackbird, one with men & women, thinking of snow, then you were the snow, capping the cedars, all twenty mountains. & once you were twenty mountains, not thinking, & you were once looking at me. 

Christian Benitez

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

Swamp Things

Esther's brother Joel has disappeared. The fog covers the marsh, waiting.

Murky water greets Esther's eyes. Their old house wants to break.

Beware of 'gators, Joel would tease. She prays to the saints.

Old trees, cattails, moss, heavy water. Old Moses' banjo broke yesterday.

Beware of snakes, she would say. Joel would swear and laugh.

Esther's lamp swings in her hand. Shadows hide in marshes, waiting.

She trudges among tall grasses. Mud and water kiss her feet.

The frogs sing. Herons cry nearby. Fog can reveal nasty things.

Beware of ghosts, Esther prays. Beware of ghosts, Joel whispers, floating.

Francine Sta. Ana

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

Sea Salt

On our first trip to the beach together I cut my foot on sharp rocks lining the shore and watched the ocean lick the crimson clean off, the salt on my tongue a slight distraction from the deep blue, the wide open, the playground sting. I’m sorry my flesh is softer than it has to be, my skin thinner than yours. I’m sorry there are parts of me I have scrubbed raw, hurt; I only wanted to be polished, untainted, good as new. I’m sorry I didn’t see the waves crashing, didn’t see any of this coming; I’m sorry I wasn’t careful, or strong. When the sea soaked up my blood that day I thought maybe it needed to drink too, needed to kiss, needed to need. I thought maybe you had always been right — when you drain my body of tears you also drain it of salt and dust so that you can shrink me down two sizes smaller and I can fit neatly into your life without taking up too much space, so that you can carry me with you wherever you go, to cities and mountains and valleys and all the oceans you’ve never explored. Tell me, please, if you find something. Tell me if you need me to search, too. Tell me if there are places you still have to visit, things you still have to unearth. Tell me if there’s any way to love you, deep blue and wide open, soft and scrubbed and thin, flesh and skin, shrinking bones, raw parts, any way at all, without letting myself bleed.

Marla Miniano

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

CARGO / 8 Down

What was I? Five on a Saturday afternoon. loot caught between a rib and an arm crook: a pack of gum and a comic book-- as You lifted me and I straddled strong on your  long thin frame. I said it doesn't get any better than this, daddy, does it? Or words like so, they breached your long composure and you coughed.

You lift the cup to your mouth and shake into the glass. You want to tell me something important. I strike a bargain with my eyes: Do not tell and I will not cry.

A heartbeat. Then the cup slides from your grasp. Mother asks me with her eyes not to right the glass.

And what is this we carry, what to Aeneas? His father light upon his back, he barely turns a hair. Cannot remember this lightness. Cannot remember striving for air as children must, watching their fathers disappear

Mookie Katigbak

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

Archaeology

Not satisfied with the sight of bodies placed side by side, they powered up the tractors and started crushing bones beneath the machinery, folding and re-folding until anonymity was achieved. Years later, experts went down there on hands and knees, digging up limbs powdered and scattered like the kitchenware of a lost culture. One of them peered up at the impossibly blue sky and remarked at the wind, What a nice place to fly kites. Somewhere in the four hundred bags they had filled so far was the boy who once ran on this field, burning his fingers with the beauty of ascension. The interns always cried whenever the bags were sieved. In the white glare of the examination rooms, the bones and the pottery shards looked the same. A mother had already been handed four hollow pieces of her child’s rib cage, and days after the burial, she was seen walking around the clearing, at one point bending down to pick up a pebble. The place was sacred to her. Every piece of the place was sacred to her. During a storm, as she held on to the walls of her house, the wind gave her an idea and now she respected every open ground. Who knew how strong a wind could blow? Who could foresee the extent of a body’s transformation? She put an end to the habit of kicking at loose soil whenever she was angry or pensive. Her face took on the shape and lines of a tourist lost in an unknown land, peering at eyes, searching, searching. This could be my child, she whispered to herself, and held the pebble close to her chest.

Eliza Victoria

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

Imago

The insects know. Theirs the numberless proof. Therefore true. They who cloak the noon Of explanation. Numberless wing-shadow. What ripeness is. In air, inhering. A-hum. Scatter a fistful. Stare at small hands In gloom. (lacking) Dissolving before touching earth. (gravity's roost) A kind of hunger. From arid ground, bodies Mounting each other. Scales peeling off tight coils. Afterwards, a breeding swarm. (droning) Pregnant wave parched from cresting. (brief lives, murmuring) Amounting-to, mounting, surmounting. No surface scarring over. No remains remaining.

Allan Popa

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

If My Last Dusk Were My Lover

     after Ellen Kort's "If Death Were A Woman"

I'd want her to come for me smelling of jasmine wearing soft cotton skirt       orange maybe     red

a scarf on her hair           She'd bring taro cake on a flowered plate     warm tea

an envelop     my name on it        in gentle cursive letters We'd touch        tips of leaves    in the garden 

crouch down to see how balmy the earth feels     dip our fingers into the moist soil             We'd walk

past the front yard       round the corner the ground strewn with fire tree blooms

a red carpet         We'd head for the shore shells         knotted on our wrists

laugh at their tinkling         the rhythm of our dancing feet the waves of sea      applause of gulls

She'd hand me my guitar        We'd sing to a rising moon        almost full         And when

it is time           she would not take me to bed in the new light

Shane Carreon

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

The Unlikely Version

Not in the threatening sense? Of course. The noodles are dead cold anyway. The clock says the train's left.

It's been quite a while, hasn't it? I start pouring the glass of wine back into its bottle, I look through

its now-empty state as a telescope expecting a similar vision as before, maybe we've had too much to drink.

So we read backwards to no avail but outside the field sketched by sun raises a nervous metaphorical hand.

There are no better reminders. Just a year ago the soup scalded your entire hand. It was my fault.

I wanted to prove you were there though I wasn't angry. I was cautious of the unlikely version existing here too.

Not that any conclusion is arriving. Ghost trains run on higher chances. So, yes, this smoke feels just like home.

Paolo Tiausas

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

Five Lines

I’m spying on myself again.

I’m slicing tomatoes and tossing the chunks in a bowl.

The kitchen light is attentive, and so is the blue of the bowl.

Now must be the safest time to disappear.

I won’t come out until I’m gone.

Conchitina Cruz

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

Fabulations

I walked to town to sell my mother’s poems. She spun a rag for me, coiled it

and set a basketful of poems on my head.

On the way I stopped to drink pond water. I threw away her poems. They were heavy.

*

The town was filled with itchy commas. I was walking home when a comma bit me under my t-shirt.

Nobody knew where the commas came from.

I yelled and threw out my arms. Prak! went my mother’s poems.

I ground her poems to powder using rocks. I tore a banana leaf and made tiny packets.

I told everyone I passed on the road I was selling comma killers.

*

Mariang Masipag is a girl I visit everyday. I eat her mother’s poems daily. I don’t do much else.

“You good-for-nothing! Never set foot on our yard again!” said her mother.

I came back the next day with large banana leaves. From the rice fields to Mariang Masipag’s house I laid them down leaf by leaf.

*

But my mother wanted for me a girl of few words. There was a house in the woods. Someone told me

an old hag lived there with her daughter. I went and I knocked on their door.

Nobody answered at the gate by the yard. I climbed their steps.

I saw a young woman lying on a mat on the floor. I asked her to be my wife. She didn’t say anything,

so I carried her home. Some people arrived after that. “Haven’t you seen the corpse of a young woman?” they asked.

*

I split open the eastern post of our house. “I can read your fortune on this piece of bamboo,” I told my mother.

I didn’t tell her I was lying. She sent me outside to work. I didn’t want to.

I spied on her instead. I saw her making poems in our kitchen.

My mother was impressed I knew her poem even before she fed it to me for lunch.

She told me not to draw poems from the well anymore. She told me to rest.

“He can see,” she told the neighbors.

*

I told my mother I’d walk past the hills to make a poem for her. She didn’t believe me.

The sun was already down by the time I returned. “I did it. I made a poem”, I said.

I spread my arms to show her how long my poem was.

I told her I made a poem from there to here. She bragged about it to the other women who were washing clothes in the river.

*

I fell asleep while waiting for the fish to bite. I woke up. I didn’t know where I was.

When I was floating down the river I thought I was dead. I did this until I died.

I didn’t mind to slap a fly off my nose because I couldn’t anymore.

My boat drifted under a canopy of trees that bore heavy poems.

Jasmine Nikki Paredes

[fyeahfilipinopoetry]

The Bladed Poem

March 1982

Behold the bladed poem Tensile and razor-sharp Cold and glinting silver In the light or dark.

See how the blackbird Of a hilt flies Bedecked with pearls On the firm mobile hand.

Look at each face On the leaf of steel, The virile subtle flames, Images of incised gold.

On one face are toilers Varied with pike and ore, Crucible, hammer and anvil, Water and whetstone.

Plow and carabao on soil, The oyster in the sea, Carving and etching tools, Bowl of acid on a table.

On the other face Are the same workmen massed Upright and poised to fight Behind the radiant flag.

The uprising completes The figures of labor And urges another surge With the well-versed weapon.

Grasp well the bladed poem And let it sing in your hands. This kampilan is a talisman Of the people in red headbands.

Jose Maria Sison