The 2025 election is over, and the results have come in. Can we reflect poetically on the elections? Dumaguete-based poet F. Jordan Carnice has done just that with the following occasional poem:

The Electorate Weighs In

After Andrea Cohen’s “The Committee Weighs In”

I tell my mother a farmer
and a fisherman won.

Another? she says. Which
province this time?

It’s a little game
we play: I pretend everybody’s

got a chance, she
pretends she isn’t hopeless.

Mr. Carnice lives in Dumaguete, but hails from Tagbilaran City, Bohol. A creative writing graduate of Silliman University, he is also a visual artist, and currently works as a researcher for the National Museum of the Philippines in Dumaguete. His works, both prose and poetry, have been published in the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Ani, NCCA’s Ubod, Santelmo, Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, Philippines Graphic Reader, Philippine Speculative Fiction, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Manoa Journal, among others. He has also authored two poetry chapbooks, Weights & Cushions (2018) and How to Make an Accident (2019). He is also a recipient of fellowships from national writing workshops in Dumaguete, Iligan, and Bacolod, and has served as a panelist twice at the Taboan Writers Festival. He was recently hailed as Poet of the Year at both the 2023 and 2024 Nick Joaquin Literary Awards, the first poet to have ever won that award twice in a row.

I asked him what what occasioned him to write this poem. He tells me: “In the hours between work, social media, and the demands of daily survival, I challenge myself to sit still and write about anything. It could be something as significant as world-breaking news or as trivial as the lint on my shirt. After fulfilling my civic duty in the midterm elections on May 12, I felt the urge to write about it. I do not shy away from sensitive topics, and yet for this one, I didn’t know where to begin.

He says he watched on television how the country once again voted in many of the usual politicos—those who organize beauty pageants and basketball leagues, or who showcase TikTok performers and the same-old street dance competitions funded by taxpayer money. He says: “These are the politicians we see regularly at ribbon-cuttings and opening programs, often flanked by celebrities or singing and dancing at town fiestas, all while rehashing slogans and hollow promises of ‘asenso’ and ‘ginhawa.’ I let go of the idea of writing a poem.”

But the next day, he woke up with a complete text fully formed in his head. “Before it vanished,” he says, “I grabbed my phone, typed it out, and sent it to a few friends. I titled it ‘The Electorate Weighs In,’ clearly inspired by Andrea Cohen’s piercing poem, ‘The Committee Weighs In.’”

He credits Cohen for obvious reasons. “How her poem’s structure made its way into what I wanted to say about the elections wasn’t clear to me,” Mr. Carnice said. “Maybe I had reread it the day before, which was Mother’s Day. Maybe my subconscious, still reeling from the election results, simply latched onto it.”

But he acknowledges that the times are changing. “On Sibuyan Island,” Carnice says, “Nanding Marin, one of the protesters who formed a human barricade to stop mining trucks in 2023, was elected municipal mayor of San Fernando, unseating the incumbent. We also saw the likes of Ronnel Arambulo, a tricycle driver and fisherman, and Danilo Ramos, a farmer and long-time human rights defender, garner as many as three million votes each in the senatorial race. They trailed behind flashier names, but those three million votes were cast by people who believed in ordinary candidates without massive billboards or expensive TV ads, candidates who are fueled solely by the desire to serve honestly.

“Some say it will take another generation before people like them hold real power in our government. But I think the shift is already happening. If we can only keep the momentum, move forward, and finally break the cycle. It is true that literature can only do so much, and no poem has ever stopped a tank or a bullet, but I believe nothing goes to waste in writing about it.”