The Martyr - Nick Joaquin

Being in love means never having to say you’re sorry
After all, at some point in your life
That love was the most important thing to you,
That love might be the one that you hoped would last forever,
That love made you believe that destiny does exist,
And that love made you question,
Why you were afraid to fall in love in the first place.

Yo Yu - Luisa Igloria

"Have fish."
  —Chinese saying

Today, the streets flooded and ceilings leaked,
mercurial.  On TV, firemen waded through apartments

Doubting With Faith - Jordan Legaspi

I cannot tell if God exist
But I believe God does
I cannot say God is this or that
But I feel Gods presence
I cannot prove what I believe
But I cannot disprove God

A Tree - José Corazón de Jesús

Viewed from a distant vantage

I appear as a cross with arms outstretched;

As I stayed on my knees long enduring,

It seems that I am kissing God’s feet.

Poetic Human Operation - Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta

I write to you, you read me, 

in the most distant strangeness, 

under the skin and inside it, 

blind lovers clinging to the signs. 

A Prayer Before Sleep - Cece Oh!

Like the beautiful sunlight, let all my fears scoot away;

As I sleep on my lovely bed, make my worries vanish into thin air.

Make the faintest of my doubts be forever erased;

With Your abundant, endless love, have my terrors effaced.

 

The Return - Edith Tiempo

It the dead years could shake their skinny and run

As once he had circled this house in thirty counts,

He would enter this door and these old friends would not shun

Him and his tales, tales that would bear more than the spare

Testimony of his willed wit and his grey hairs.

Of course you are still looking for sea glass - Rosanna Montemayor

​you were six when you dropped 

      mama’s vase in the kitchen then buried its shards

            in the tide. Sometimes

Greek Chorus Hears Medusa Doing Zumba - Rayji de Guia

​Did you hear mga dear Medusa

attends Zumba na? Left Mixxedfit

a misfit, tits slipping through the fit of her slip.

Masks - Michellan Sarile-Alagao

Mother goes out

with a mask on

buys fruit

comes home

says it is alright

see, we have santol

we eat the bitter lining

with salt

Mango Trees - Christian Benitez

Sunset mangoes
hang perpetually, the naked
boughs arching
like a mother’s hand.

Gravity Suspended - Ayn Frances dela Cruz

gravity suspended.
fowls dreaming of air.

Jesus the King - Jordan Legaspi

You are the King of kings
born in a manger
to offer the beautiful place for us

At the river crossing - Jim Pascual Agustin

Rocks and boulders
smoothed to roundness by the relentless
rushing of cold mountain waters,
please keep my daughters’
little feet on your firm backs.

The Hay(na)ku of Numbers - Eileen R. Tabios

One
need not
rely on anyone

Cuauhtemoc - Luisa Igloria

The young sailor
shows us around the visiting
ship, its instruments for calculating
moisture in the air; the numbered masts,

catching your flying kiss - RIC S. Bastasa

what i catch today is a
flying kiss
like a white butterfly
departing from your
rose lips
now hovering to mine

To Celia - Francisco Balagtas

If I recall and read again
those days in love’s long-faded script,
would there be not a mark or trace
but Celia’s, imprinted on my breast?