“Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter.” Chinua Achebe A rite of passage. In my family, when a girl is born, she is gifted a shovel. Generations of gravediggers slicing through the ground like an autopsy, exposed roots, tiny pebbles glinting like my mother’s eyes after weeping. They buried all they did not want… Read more →
No one knew why his neighborhood got hit so many times. It might’ve been the lay of the surrounding farmland, now splattered with monster homes since old man Bix died and his kids sold off most of the land. The Reiki woman told him the indigenous spirits were angry. God knows weird shit had happened close by, like the suicides,… Read more →
Sisimulan ko sa simula. Foremother trudges through Guimaras grasslands, gathers mangoes in a pina leaf basket woven tight as DNA strands. All day, she will carry orbs of gold light under her arm. On Long Island, I carry an eighth of weed in the pocket of my father’s Mets jersey, but the air still smells of salt. Picture the aswang… Read more →
During the hailstorm, we were pelted by thick crystalline balls like when my favourite necklace broke, beads dancing on the kitchen floor, and I dared you to grab me like that again; one time too many.
dry lakebed & hot wind where music used to live dry lakebed & hot wind where bees used to dry lakebed & hot wound where the moon dry lakebed & no forest all dust dry lakebed & weed-cracked highways dry lakebed & what passed for love dry lakebed & empty dry lakebed & whatever follows regret in the dictionary dry… Read more →
I held a newborn yesterday; I rubbed his purple, downy skin with clean, white towels under the heat lamp until he cried and pinked up. Others came over then—doctors, nurses, and there were these medical students who didn’t know what to do with their hands. I elbowed all of them out of the way. I sang to the baby and… Read more →
The end comes many times, always in different disguises: effervescent plumes of sarcasm, barely veiled accusations, buttoned-up rancor. You fear the void beyond the mask. Its hunger for your porous bones. Its loneliness, playing you like a flute. It howls and you do too, you don’t know better. What it takes to quiet it down. Which voice is truly mine…. Read more →
Good mothers wear tobacco pouchesfilled with lost teeth, dividetheir bodies into muffin tins, serve themselves for breakfast. Goodmothers even out wobbly table legswith their dream journals and pinky skin. They make afternoon teawith the children’s bathwater. Good mothers sayout loud, This is delicious. Good mothers stuffmagpie feathers in their ears, stuff magpie feathersin their children’s ears. Good mothers build cages… Read more →