Six Poems in Likhaan 12 (!!!)

What a dream! I have six poems in the 12th issue of "Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature" by the UP Institute of Creative Writing. As far as literary journals in this country go, this is the mothership. Four of these poems--"An Ecological Disaster," "Men in the Woods," "Gallbladder" and "To Build a House"--were workshopped during the UST Workshop early this year (many thanks to Ned Parfan and his critical eye!), while "Cul-de-sac" was part of the suite that got rejected from the 2018 Ateneo Writers Workshop. Honestly the layout of this issue is giving me major ADHD vibes, so in lieu of screenshots here are the full texts.

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An Ecological Disaster

When my father starts his prayers,

it is an ecological disaster:

a boulder tumbling on the face

of a naked mountain, baked

to a perfect brown by the sun.

His words, needle-thin and ripe

with intention, plummet like acid rain

at the end of a drought.

Boys must be boys, he says,

to no particular name.

In my head, the rain gains strength,

scalding the sandy surface

of sinful dreams. It isn’t normal,

is what he means, like snow

that falls on the desert floor

and stays. When I leave

the house, it is a nightmare

for my father, who must think

I tumble from one bar to the next,

from one lover to another,

and so he spends the night

staring out the window, while I

spend my money on keys

to rooms I’d never own.

What’s natural is pre-ordained:

This, my father does not know.

The fall of a drop on parched soil,

or a boy’s heart into another’s arms,

is a story as ancient as amen,

and the storm that crumbles

rocks into grains of dirt

is as true and pure as his oldest

wish.

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Men in the Woods

I remember Julio: scar beneath a mournful

eye, and scowl on a face of china white.

A lighter peeking from his pocket the night

we met. Soaked shirts and sharp breaths

in a glade of leaves and fallen fruit.

Dante, too, and the dandelion fluff

on his crown of silver hair. His panting,

I can’t forget, gray-maned animal 

in leather pants, and shower of spit

with each thrust. Most of all, Gael,

flat on a stretcher, half-conscious, his leg

spurting blood, his head all blues

and crusting red. Took a shortcut that led

to brittle earth, then a ten-foot drop

on logs and rocks. His scream I heard,

but who called the ambulance, I don’t recall.

At break of dawn, they let us go, but not

before a round of questions, fired

at breakneck speed. Took our names,

but not what games we’d played, then sirens

breaking the silence. Nobody offered us

a ride, but we didn’t mind. Better to walk

and shake off the night, embrace the cold

spring morning all the way to the nearest

bus stop. Sunshine, soft as angels, fell

on our faces, casting our devils aside.

Nobody spoke; we only listened

to one another’s breathing, counting

our blessings. Jangle of coins in our pants,

hastily buttoned, caked with mud.

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To Build a House

we first build a ship. My father points

to the slow unmasking of the night sky,

shedding its cape of stars over parabolas

of mountains. He tells me the story

I’ve heard many times, how the king

of Athens sent his army to the woods

to bring home all the trees, each log

skinned of bark, flattened and polished

to rectangular planks. The hour too early

for breakfast or tired stories, there’s no

telling what he knows, but I know he smells

the whiskey and weed on my jacket.

Yet he chooses to say nothing, as do I,

our mutual silence as cobwebbed

as the ship on Theseus’ port, welcoming

a new plank to its soggy skeleton

until nothing remained of its old frame,

letting the builders strip it naked

rather than complain. I think of words

that hurt, like seawater feasting

on the hull of a tethered ship, and sip

my coffee instead. What does one say

to weathered kings, to fathers whose lives

are built on pretense? He points to a stain

on the linoleum, and I nod, shifting

my gaze downwards, guided by the ring

on his crooked finger: the rusting toaster,

the threadbare curtains, the staircase

in need of replacing, every surface

of this house torn apart in his mind

with the speed of one getting rid

of a sinking ship, our most sacred parts

so willfully effaced. Might as well

begin with How have you been?

Tell me everything. Tell me of your days

in prison, and I’ll tell you today

it’s been three years since I buried

my mother. And maybe we can skip

the more somber parts, the years

marked by your cold absence.

We begin with small things, words

light as feathers, maybe a smile,

maybe pardon for remembered sins.

Until gradually our vessel takes form,

its stern gilded with the faces of future

kings, its mast soaring to the ether.

Until finally, we set sail, wordless,

toward a home we no longer know.

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Gallbladder

First, fix on the valley beneath

the ribs. Know the weakest spot,

where flesh will most likely give.

The skin is thin and breaks once

pricked by nail or blade or pick.

Pick his frame, framed between

metal bars. Memorize his outline

in the dark. Often, the lights

are dimmed, if not out. Often

the others are down, if not high.

Aim the shiv, whittled from the edge

of a toothbrush, like a dart practiced

and hurled. Anticipate the hushed

thud of the stab—muscle pierced

as fish speared in a shrinking pond.

Your part is done, now play

the clueless one. Turn in bed,

facing the wall, and heed the lure

of sleep, as war spreads from

cell to cell, con versus con.  

Watch as circles multiply on bodies

in the showers. Listen at night

to screams muffled by a shirt or a palm

pressed against the lips, then see

next morning who walks with a limp.

See to it they do not stop until

they’ve come for him: the whole

of him, the bits of him, his heart

and lungs and liver, his gallbladder

and the intestines coiled in his gut.

Make more shivs. Nick your neighbor’s

razor. Bribe the lout above your bunk

to do the nicking for you. Fifteen years

means a wife all wrinkled, and a son

all grown and smart, who’ll look you

in the eyes with no hint of recognition,

and he bought that for you—a decade

and a half wasted in this ten-by-ten

with three other men. So return to him

what is owed: Keep him high, adrift

in some make-believe cloud, thinking

you’ll still run for him when both of you

get out. Wait until the dead of night,

when he’s dead asleep and can’t run

from you. Then take your aim.

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Pink and White

Four in the morning, a man begins

a hymn on a harp. Blanket of snow

on the pavement, basket of blooms,

pink and white, in the absence of light

shapeless, like a newborn melody

from way back when the hour

was slow, the ether pink and white,

the air thick with his wife’s perfume.

Notes pricking on his open wounds,

bleeding a minute trail of words.

Children, for one, though they had

none. Now a note folding

into a syllable landing square

on his tongue. Must be the taste

of warmth, bubbles in an evening

bath, a rubber duck between

slippery legs, fists of inch-long fingers.

Must be nice, this sight in a tub,

tiny bodies to rub afterwards.

If only she had more patience,

waited for this song now breaking

loose from the back of his throat,

now more croak than croon.

Old tune, older than the sky

on his forehead, the lines inscribed

beneath his eyes, the quiver in his bones.

After Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

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Cul-de-sac

There’s logic to this place: how these slender streets

bleed into one another, concrete weaving into concrete,

the way nerves entwine within layers of tissue,

the way familiar structures disappear in plain sight.

Turn right doesn’t mean that time we stood under

the lamppost’s amber glow, wishing the rain would end

that row over something small. The chip on the china,

perhaps, the sunflower wilting on the terrace.

Turn right means ten shots of whiskey without ice,

humming something slow and dark and glum,

like smoke trails at day’s end, like an old house

stricken with insomnia, wooden doors creaking

even with the gentlest wind. So when I told you

I was never leaving, I was hoping you would get

the smallness of my aim, not to confuse desire

with devotion, the way night lights obscure details

of a face, a dress, the faded colors on street signs.

Hoping you’d turn around, turn into the city

I’d learned to love like our own child, this city

of barren women, scarred, a free-for-all nursery.

On the way home, we passed the house with the red gate,

the carved Virgin weeping upfront. While I whispered

another prayer, plucked at random from my childhood,

you said we were past reason. Then you turned left,

which made me think you had left for good.

But you only wanted to see our old house

one last time, at the cul-de-sac where nothing good

ever happened. Where days were hard to recall,

they blended into one another, the way buildings start

to look the same after so many years, the way, waking

in the middle of the night, I can no longer tell our faces

apart, or if you've already vanished, perhaps for good.