terminal

All it takes is a calculated step, just a few seconds before a whistle and the screech of steel on steel. The element of surprise, the brief moment of disbelief, will not be mine. I try to think of the blood, the ribbons of flesh and shards of bone, but all I could think of was liquid air as think as ink. I could feel concrete beneath my shoes, throbbing with the threat of pavement, roads that lead to home.

One day, I thought, I promised, I will be brave. 

skirts and school girls

He runs a finger across the spines of the books on the shelf without reading the titles, watching her out of the corner of an eye—the thick-rimmed glasses that flash momentarily as it caught the light, the sheer white blouse hugging her round breasts, the swish of a knee-length skirt that revealed glimpses of smooth skin.

2012

Ganito kabagal ang ilang segundo bago magunaw ang daigdig. 

Aalon ang alak sa basong hawak, at mauunawaan ko sa wakas na walang gaspang na nalalabi sa mga kamay na hindi sanay sa bubog. Dama ko ang pawis ng yelo sa malalalim na guhit ng palad na minsang pinamuhatan ng kapalaran.

pebrero

may gabing humihigpit
ang kapit kay lapit
ng buwan lulan
ang langit

alinsangan
sa lansangan
masugid sa lubid
tumatawid umaawit

may along nabibilang sa dagat nalilikha nasusukat
ng buntong-hininga kampay ng kamay sa apoy lumalangoy

hapo



pagkatapos

Loved Me for the Books I Read

You lay them neatly on the table, as if you were dealing a stack of cards, the titles face down, the blurbs like a code I was supposed to fathom. Fathom is a curious word, I thought, buying time, recalling depth and perhaps the calculated reach of an arm.

I didn't know you still have these books and you wanted to return them to me. Wilde and Hardy and Mann and something else I could not recall I owned once. You reach for this volume and turn it over--revealing--Ishiguro.

'Never Let Me Go,' you say, and in the second between your whisper and the turning of the book, I fooled myself that you meant it. But the words hang in the air like motes of dust, and I start gathering the books, shuffling them back, into a stack.

The Quasi-Plagiarist: On Urban(e) Poems

The City is Alive
by Miguel Paolo Celestial
translated from the original Filipino

The power cords caught the kite by its tail,
strangling its flight across the purple sky.
A sparrow negotiates the trick of wires,
From the door of my window, it tells a song.
The sun battles against the rust on the roofs.