Tag / poetry

by buglaswritersjournal

Lyde Sison Villanueva’s “La Muerte de la Luz”

A national magazine once posed this question to Dumaguete writer and National Artist for Literature Edith Lopez Tiempo: “What makes you stay in the Philippines?” Her answer was short: “The Dumaguete shoreline.” The response is perfectly emblematic of the pull of place in the life of writers, and how important where one comes from is in the life of the imagination.

Dumaguete is a singular place of importance when it comes to literature in the Philippines. For many, it is the hometown of Philippine literature itself, having been the nurturing ground for many of the best writers in the country, and the literal hometown to some of our most important contemporary writers, many of whom have helped shape the country’s literature.

For this inaugural issue of the City of Literature series, we celebrate one such Dumagueteño who is helping shape local literature. A young poet, Lyde Sison Villanueva graduated with a degree in Mass Communication from Silliman University in 2008. He was a fellow for poetry for the 2013 Silliman University National Writers Workshop. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at De La Salle University. His works have appeared in various publications like Sunday Times Magazine and The Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. His first poetry chapbook entitled Made Easy was published in 2019. This year, he won Second Prize for Poetry at the Palanca Awards.

We share the title poem from that award-winning collection:

La Muerte de la Luz

In this Museum of Bones,
the study begins with light.

Fragments of a cranium
are arranged like an unnamed constellation,

attempt to replicate
the shape of the head.

Small patches of discoloration—
a tinge of sepia—approximate the time it lived.

A thousand years before Christ, maybe.
Or even older than fire.

The caliper used to measure its age
is the same period it takes half the carbon

in the specimen to naturally decay.
The other bones are missing

or maybe left unexcavated,
or the body was buried elsewhere.

The label says it is an early human—
unknown gender—but the first to walk

upright and migrate;
a race belonging only to the past.

Its identity is the number of prey
or enemies it defeated only to survive,

the distance of the land bridges crossed,
how did it get here, did it miss home?

With only a few fragments,
conjuring its body—where flesh and organs

used to be—is a near-impossible task

Mr. Villanueva wrote most of the poems in the collection for the creative exercise in his comprehensive exam for his MFA course: “My proposed thesis project is a collection of ekphrastic poetry and I was tasked to write a suite of poems based on the artworks of a Filipino master. I’ve always been interested in the intersection of various forms of art (literary and visual) that’s why I’ve chosen to take on this project.”

Asked how he feels about winning the Palanca, he says: “I’ve always found value in the Palanca awards not just on the national literary scale, but more so on the personal level. I consider the award as a validation of my work as a writer. But most importantly, I treat the Palanca as a production deadline. Every year, since 2018, I’ve tried to come up with a writing project or revise an old one for the Palanca. This is the first time I submitted this collection in the Poetry category and thankfully it won. But I also believe this is the Universe reminding me to finally finish my MFA thesis.”

by buglaswritersjournal

Grace Monte de Ramos’ “Filipina Nude in Quarantine”

If there is one poet from Negros Oriental whose book I am most eager to get my hands on, it will be the Siaton poet Grace R. Monte de Ramos—a resolutely feminist writer who has her pulse on the issues that continue to bedevil the Filipino woman, and renders these concerns in acutely observed verses that not only take these issues with bravery and humor, but also conflates them with the nuances of the female body and the female experiences. In other words, she has always been political, but centers that with a wry female gaze. In 2003, for example, her poem “Brave Woman” was chosen for inclusion in the book Poets Against the War, edited by Sam Hamill for Nations Books—a pathreaking collection of anti-war poems by international writers opposed to the American war in Iraq. Alas, while she has been published widely—in Caracoa, in Ani, in Sands & Coral, in Likhaan, in Philippine Studies, etc.—and is much-anthologized, she has yet to gather her poems together in one volume. Someday, we hope to persuade her with some finality.

Ms. Monte de Ramos, who is married to the poet Juaniyo Arcellana [son of the National Artist for Literature Francisco Arcellana] and now lives in Mandaluyong, earned her degree in Creative Writing at Silliman University, where she studied under the guidance of Edilberto K. Tiempo and Edith L. Tiempo, one of the country’s most distinguished literary couples. She first taught literature at Silliman after graduation, then worked at the Cultural Center of the Philippines before deciding to be a full-time mother and caretaker of cats. But she persists in her literary inclinations by writing, reading, editing other writers’ manuscripts, and translating works into Binisaya [she has translated Alice McLerran’s beloved children’s book The Mountain That Loved a Bird into Ang Bukid nga Nahigugma sa Langgam], while also spending time solving Sudoku puzzles.

In the middle of the pandemic, she wrote this poem for a national publication that eventually chose not to publish it—in fear of the powers that be:

Filipina Nude in Quarantine

I need a Brazilian wax
for this horsehair
growing rampant
around my crotch
but the salons are all closed, 
damn this lockdown, and my lover
anyway can’t go to where we used 
to meet, bookstore, bar,
even church, where briefly
we rehearsed postures
of body-worship. Why did Harry
have to be gleefully
triumphant about it?
He might not have 
kulasisi like Duterte, but I
am secretly one,
a very horny one
whenever my period is done.
I bought two panties 
to please my married man,
one red, one black, and now they
have to wait until it’s safe to traverse
EDSA to get to the next tryst.
My groin needs whitening,
my nipples are shriveling from lack
of licking and sucking. Even 
phone sex is out, as my husband
is working from home, dispensing
legal advice on Zoom,
and my mewling and moaning
would surely reach him through
these thin walls.
O I miss the windowless rooms
where I could be imperious
like a queen or as slavish
as a bitch in heat.
But I am prisoner 
instead. Tell me, generals of checkpoints
and protocols, what do I do 
with all this hair?

Of this poem, Grace has this to say: “When Duterte became president many people wrote angry poems about him. I did not, as I was not in the mood for rage-filled or anguish-laced poetry. Indeed, Krip Yuson had to ask me if he could include ‘Brave Woman’ in the anthology, Bloodlust. I hadn’t sent anything. ‘Been there, done that,’ is what I said to him. I wanted to move on from anger to satire, I wanted my poems to laugh in their faces, make them look ridiculous. This poem was obviously written during the Covid lockdown, when we were subjected to many ridiculous rules.”

by buglaswritersjournal

Artemio Tadena’s “Poet in Mid-Career”

Poets writing about the craft [or the life pursuing the craft] is nothing new, but there is something compelling—and also, sadly, foreboding—about this 1968 poem about being a “mid-career poet,” written by the Dumaguete writer Artemio Tadena. When he published this, he was still really at the beginning of prolific career as a published poet, also at the cusp of winning various national awards, and nine years before he would die:

Poet in Mid-Career 

And wherever I go, there would also go 
Spirals of roses, enameling of songs, 
Birds on golden boughs—there, with them, is where I belong. 
Angels and bell buoy weather, denominations and 
Powers: these, too, to my triumph will be witnesses, 
Not merely tides and cliffs — or pinioned land. 

Circling now the spirals of the sun, he saw 
That flight did not bring him any farther from his home: 
Nor any graduate level from that which hovered into view: 
Momentarily he hung — then 
                         plum — 
                                metted 
                                        into 
                                              the 
                                                   foam: —
Content at last with what he scaled to bring 
After repeated circling and circling: 
His own self it was he wanted to, 
But, alas, could never escape from.

Tadena was only 37 [on the eve of turning 38] when he died on 5 December 1977, just a day before his birthday on December 6. We could let this past week of December pass then without at least commemorating his memory.

A popular literature teacher at Foundation University, Boy [as he was called by friends and family] was serious about his poetry—he was a fellow at the Silliman University National Writers Workshop in 1969 and had trained, if briefly, under the Tiempos, and later he won three Palanca Awards for his efforts: second prize in 1969 for his collection Northward Into Noon, another second prize in 1972 for The Edge of the Wind, and finally first prize for Identities in 1974.

Three years after his last Palanca win, he would be dead. He was such a young man when he succumbed to a fateful cardiac arrest—and one might say, robbed of further attaining poetic heights that were well within his grasp. Today, almost no one remembers this singular poet from Dumaguete.

In 2016, two other poets—Myrna Peña-Reyes of Dumaguete and [soon to be National Artist for Literature] Gemino H. Abad of Manila and Cebu—would try to resurrect his name and poetry, and came up with an anthology of his poetry, This Craft, As With a Woman Loved: Selected Poems, published by the University of Sto. Tomas Publishing House.

From the biographical afterword of that book, Peña-Reyes writes: “We realized [in 2010, during a break in the Silliman Writers Workshop] that hardly anybody now knows the young Dumaguete poet of our generation whose outstanding work earned prestigious literary awards before his untimely death… Except for a few poems in some anthologies, his work is not available, all of his books having been out of print for decades.”

Together, Peña-Reyes and Abad set to gather Tadena’s poems from several collections, as well as take inventory of the ones in miscellaneous publications—mostly school papers and journals—housed at both the Foundation University Library and the Silliman University Library. Abad would edit and annotate the poems, and Peña-Reyes would endeavor to write a definitive biographical essay of the man.

Because of the book, we now know that Tadena’s mother, Eufrecina Maputi, was a Dumaguete native, and his father, Eugenio Tadena Sr., was an Ilocano who had settled in Dumaguete after finding work as a foreman in a road construction company in Negros Oriental. Eugenio’s first two wives died in childbirth; Eufrecina would become his third wife, and she would bear him three children, Artemio being the eldest. All in all, Eugenio would sire sixteen children with four wives.

We know that Tadena would matriculate at West Central School [now West City Elementary School], where he displayed an uncanny intellect even as a child, and a hankering for the arts. In 1951, for example, a watercolor painting of his earned worldwide recognition in an arts competition sponsored by UNICEF. He would later attend the high school at East Visayas School of Arts and Trade [or EVSAT, now the Negros Oriental State University]. He edited the school paper, and won prizes at various declamation and oratorical contests.

We know that he was a parttime college student at Silliman University, where he wasted no opportunity to publish his poems and essays in the two student publications—The Sillimanian and Sands & Coral, the prestigious literary folio of the university. The staff of The Sillimanian found him “strange,” “weird,” “aloof,” and “proud”—and he would sulk and go on a tantrum when his poems would not get published.

We now know that his first publication, in 1957, was with the Sands & Coral, with the poem “What is This Life We Lead and Lead?” And even then, his singular poetic style made him stand out. “I didn’t understand completely what [the poem] meant,” Peña-Reyes writes, “but instinctively, I recognized the voice of a genuine poet and became a fan.” She also recalls having serious conversations with him—“It was always serious, no bantering or frivolous talk, and I thought he took himself too seriously. He was brimming with ideas and information about poets and their work… No wonder he made people uncomfortable—he just had too much he wanted to share, and with such passion and earnestness.”

We know that he truly flourished at Foundation College [now Foundation University], where he eventually transferred. He was on the honor roll and edited the school paper, and when he graduated with an A.B. degree, he was recipient of the Presidential Pin award. Later, Foundation would hire him to teach English and literature. There, he would become a professor, chair of the dramatics guild, and adviser and editor of several campus publications. At the time of his death, he was head of Foundation’s English Department, as well as its Office of Publications and University Research.

We know that he married the Cebu writer and dancer Gemma Racoma in 1967, and had two boys, Ireland Luke and Adrian Gregory. The marriage did not last. Gemma would leave for a life abroad with their children, and Artemio returned to Dumaguete to live with his family.

We know that he published independently five books of poetry: aside from the aforementioned Palanca-winning collections, he would also come out with Poems (Volume One) in 1968 and The Bloodied Envelope in 1973. That last title won him first place in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Award for Poetry, also in 1973.

We finally know that he had just passed the Bar exam when he died—alone in his room, in the process of tying his shoes, ready to go to work.

Remembering his poetry, we know that he went where there will be “spirals of roses, enameling of songs / Birds on golden boughs—there, with them, is where I belong.”

by buglaswritersjournal

Simon Anton Diego Baena’s “Year End”

There are many poems about the holiday season—some beloved Christmas carols, notably “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” started off as poems later on set to song; and “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” by Clement Clarke Moore, remains a classic Christmas Eve read for those who wish to spend a more literary holiday. But if one plunges deep into Philippine literature, one will find a curious dearth of poetry about Christmas or the New Year. Which is strange, because Christmas is so much a part of the Filipino soul, and so much a part of our cultural fabric that we have even come to claim the longest Christmas season of all in the world, starting from the very first day of September until Noche de Reyes [or Night of the Three Kings] in January 6. Notwithstanding the occasional sophomoric poetic drivel young writers publish in the “Christmas Issues” of school publications, Christmas or New Year poetry has never been a staple in our literature. Asked why this is so, the poet Merlie Alunan had this to say: “Pilit kaayo nga topic, lisod badbaron. Handomon, bation, di lang sulaton.”

Pilit kaayo, lisod badbaron—handomon, bation, di lang sulaton. The focus is too narrow, the topic is too difficult to untie, to let breathe. It needs depths of memory, it needs depths of feeling—aside from the fact that it needs to be written well. True enough, but writing about Christmas and the New Year—especially the New Year—can be challenging because it comes with a baggage of themes that are, for the most part, clichés: the New Year often revolves around themes of renewal, hope, and resolutions, and these topics can feel overused or trite, making it difficult to approach them in a fresh or meaningful way. There is also often the pressure of optimism, an expectation of celebration, which can feel limiting, especially if you’re in a more introspective or somber mood that doesn’t align with societal expectations.  There’s also the fact that whatever inspiration to write about the New Year deals with something that is, for the most part, ephemeral—the New Year is a fleeting moment, often overshadowed by holiday fatigue or distractions, and capturing its essence poetically requires quick yet thoughtful reflection, which can be hard to balance.

It is also a project that deals with something abstract, since writing about the passage of time or the transition between years often can feel intangible, and conveying these abstract concepts in a vivid or relatable way can take significant creative effort. There is also that battleground of the personal vs. the universal one has to enter when writing about the New Year, which as a celebration can be deeply personal, and as a holiday can be marked by individual milestones and emotions—and yet it is also a collective experience. Striking the right balance between personal authenticity and universal appeal can be tricky. And since New Year happens every year, not unique to anyone celebrating it, writing about it can be challenged by the expectation of novelty: a New Year poem might feel like it demands innovation to match the idea of “newness,” adding pressure to avoid repeating familiar ideas or structures we have already read before. 

That said, we still have poets in our midst who do still try to reflect poetically on the New Year. Here is one by the Bais City poet Simon Anton Diego Baena first published in the Winter 2021 issue of The Adirondack Review:

Year End

I wonder if the fuel is enough
to reach the island before dawn

but the water is not moving

months go by like the bruised knee
of a kneeling child

sometimes God does not listen
he only starts the rain

and the city sleeps

the bell tolls
someone keeps knocking at the door

the family gathers after a funeral
as usual

when there are no fireworks
in the night sky

The poem captures so well the somber tone of reflection and inevitability that often accompanies the close of a year, and its themes are woven around mortality, uncertainty, faith, and the absence of joy, all explored with quiet introspection. The opening lines, “I wonder if the fuel is enough / to reach the island before dawn,” evoke a sense of doubt and yearning. The “island” seems to symbolize a place of solace or escape, while the uncertainty about having “enough” to reach it mirrors the speaker’s vulnerability and limitations. This sense of stagnation is reinforced by the line, “the water is not moving,” suggesting a life stuck in place, unable to progress.

Throughout the poem, images of grief and pain are recurrent. The metaphor of time passing like ”the bruised knee of a kneeling child” vividly conveys a sense of prolonged, unhealed suffering. Loss is ever-present, as seen in the gathering of family “after a funeral / as usual,” which highlights the routine nature of tragedy in the speaker’s life. The absence of fireworks in the night sky further emphasizes a lack of celebration or hope, reinforcing the subdued mood of the piece. The “bell tolls” and persistent “knocking at the door” symbolize mortality and unresolved calls for attention, adding an air of inevitability to the poem’s exploration of life’s transient nature.

The speaker’s struggle with faith is evident in the line, “sometimes God does not listen.” This poignant admission reflects a feeling of divine indifference, compounded by the observation that “he only starts the rain.” While rain often symbolizes renewal, here it appears as a force that adds to the city’s stillness, amplifying the sense of desolation. The structure of the poem, too, with its short, fragmented lines and lack of punctuation, creates a rhythm that mirrors the hesitant, reflective tone of the speaker’s thoughts.

Overall, Baena’s “Year End” examines the weight of grief, the cyclical nature of life, and the unfulfilled yearning for movement and solace. It leaves readers with a lingering sense of stillness and resignation, encapsulating the emotional complexity of endings and transitions.

Baena hails from Bais City, Negros Oriental, and is the author of two chapbooks, The Magnum Opus Persists in the Evening [published by Jacar Press] and The Lingering Wound [published by 2River]. He was a semi-finalist for the Tomaz Salamun Prize at VERSE in 2021. A prolific poet, his work is forthcoming in The Columbia Review, South Dakota Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Apalachee Review, Louisiana Literature, and elsewhere. Asked why he wrote the poem, Baena says: “I wrote the poem during the pandemic lockdown. Back then, you get daily updates of COVID deaths and infections. Really, really a surreal time to be alive, as if there was no future, everything we do was in some kind of a limbo. Everything we did was in some kind of a limbo. The title reflects all the uncertainties that await us in the new year. As if everything repeats itself with the ongoing lockdowns back then.”

A somber reflection to start the year with, but here’s to uncertainty. May we face it bravely in the New Year.

by buglaswritersjournal

Night of the Rabble-Rousers

By CESAR ALJAMA

Under a mercury lamp
In front of Father Tropa’s white house,
By the sea off Dumaguete,
Gather a crowd of bystanders
Around bible-clutching ministers,
Local sages, native philosophers,
And self-styled prophets of doom
Engaged in a free-for-all match
Of rhetorics, semantics,
Home-brewed knowledge, and folk beliefs
About the myths and mysteries
Ever shrouding the life of Christ.

From a distance,
On top of the concrete seawall,
Over heads and shoulders of the crowd,
I watch with amused delight
The endless bursts of wisdom,
Strange revelations,
Esoteric facts and fiction
That send strong surge of friction
Electrifying the soggy summer night.

Suddenly the lamp expires.
The rabble-rousers do not mind.
The demagoguery goes on unperturbed.
Behind me I hear the sea waves laugh
As they lap the craggy rocks.
Swish. Swoosh. Swash.
Even the quarter moon strikes a sheepish smile
As a balut vendor cries his eggs out
And a tricycle sputters fast –
Its passengers shouting
Obscenities at the crowd.

Cesar Aljama is an architect. He has won the Palanca Award for his poetry. He lives in Bae, Laguna, which is beside Los Baños. He was a fellow at the Silliman University National Writers Workshop.
by buglaswritersjournal

Harbor Home

By MYRNA PEÑA-REYES

1

Halfway on that long sea journey
you remember the mountain swinging into view,
blue slope shaping the island;
the palm-lined shoreline drawing you closer
into the harbor of that quiet sea town
sheltered in the mountain’s shadow.

2

On the promenade by the w1ater
they stroll late afternoons and early evenings,
those students, teachers off from school,
clerks from City Hall; an old man
walking his idiot grandson;
the wealthy Chinese dowager
hobbling on stunted, bound feet
stockinged in any weather,
her retinue of servant girls toting
fair-skinned fat-faced babies;
earnest children, sad old ladies
hawking sweepstake tickets, salted peanuts,
bibingka, warm Coca-Cola.
In groups or alone,
they come for the breeze from the water,
to watch shadows settle on nearby islands,
Cebu, Panglao, Siquijor and, some days,
the coast of Mindanao hovering
on the horizon’s haze.
At dusk they slowly head for home,
the Angelus ringing
Hail Mary, full of grace.

3

Night, and the fishermen go to sea
regretting the moon that pales the glimmer
of their lanterns on the water luring fish
into nets, onto baited hooks dangled
in dark depths.

Spread out, the bancas rock and sway
on the tide, stringing their lights
across the bay; the melancholy flames
flash like sea snakes on the swish and rush
of the moon-drawn flood racing,
plunging. Magic and terror
battering the constant shore.

4

In town at no fixed hour the people
mark the coming and going of boats
in the harbor by their whistles and horns:
three blares for arrival, two for departure–
Manila, Mindanao, Cebu;
and sometimes at night a massive freighter
from Liverpool or Amsterdam dropping
or raising anchor blasts its horn;
deep booms bounce off the mountain,
echo and float in the shattered dark
where the startled sleeper, waking,
turns over, and resumes dreaming
in that slumbering town by the sea.

5

Wishing to see more
than vapor trails across the sky
on that extended journey,
you welcome birds broadcasting land.
Seduced by other harbors,
you think all ports the same,
forgetting that which you loved well.
Still, served by memory,
time’s inconstant servant,
summoned up by one thing or another,
you dream someday arriving
at the hometown you remember,
and finding it there.

Myrna Peña-Reyes was born in Cagayan de Oro City, but her family moved to Dumaguete where she was educated at Silliman University from elementary through college, graduating with a BA in English. She went on to earn her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. While a resident of Eugene, Oregon where she lived with her late husband, the poet William T. Sweet, she was a winner of the Oregon Literary Fellowship grant for poetry in 2002. Presently retired in her hometown of Dumaguete, she continues her volunteer affiliation with Silliman University’s literature and creative writing program. Her poetry collections include The River Singing Stone (1994), Almost Home: Poems (2004), and Memory’s Mercy: New and Selected Poems (2014).
by buglaswritersjournal

Boulevard Tree

By NERISA DEL CARMEN GUEVARA

Under the shadow of this tree
We are speckled by pieces of sun
Sliding between the leaves.
The wind falls
In slivers
Through the silences
Of roughened bark.

We are above it all
Perched like birds
Sitting on the branch
Like the foamed thoughts
Of the poets meditating
On the sea wall below.

Siquijor seems nearer to us
Than in our dreams.
And when the wind
Slips
Into our shirts,
We puff up like chicks
Wanting to fly.

Nerisa del Carmen Guevara is an Associate Professor teaching at the University of Santo Tomas. She has exhibited her installations and performance pieces at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and other spaces. She has received a Palanca Award for her poetry, a Silver Cup for Dance Solo in the April Spring Festival in Pyongyang, and a Catholic Mass Media Award. She has an M.A. in English Studies from University of the Philippines, Diliman, and she is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing in the same university. A featured Southeast Asian performance artist, her documentaries Elegies and Infinite Gestures are currently in the archives of The Live Art Digital Agency (LADA), London. Guevara has done performance art pieces for the Philippine International Performance Art Festival, SIPA International Performance Art Festival, PERFORMATURA, and Grace Exhibition Space, New York. Her poetry is collected in Reaching Destination: Poems and the Search for Home [UST, 2004].
by buglaswritersjournal

Bonsai

By EDITH LOPEZ TIEMPO

All that I love
I fold over once
And once again
And keep in a box
Or a slit in a hollow post
Or in my shoe.

All that I love?
Why, yes, but for the moment—
And for all time, both.
Something that folds and keeps easy,
Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie,
A roto picture of a beauty queen,
A blue Indian shawl, even
A money bill.

It’s utter sublimation,
A feat, this heart’s control
Moment to moment
To scale all love down
To a cupped hand’s size,

Till seashells are broken pieces
From God’s own bright teeth,
And life and love are real
Things you can run and
Breathless hand over
To the merest child.

Edith Lopez Tiempo was born in Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya in 1919. After her marriage to Edilberto Tiempo in 1940, the couple moved to Dumaguete City, where she earned her BA in English in 1947. She later pursued her MA at the University of Iowa as part of the famed Iowa Writers Workshop, graduating in 1950. In 1958, she earned her Ph.D. at the University of Denver in Colorado in 1958. In 1962, together with her husband, she co-founded the Silliman University National Writers Workshop. Her books include the short story collection Abide, Joshua and Other Stories [1964], the poetry collections The Tracks of Babylon and Other Poems [1966], The Charmer's Box and Other Poems [1993], Beyond, Extensions [1993], and Marginal Annotations and Other Poems [2010], and the novels A Blade of Fern [1978], His Native Coast [1979], The Alien Corn [1992], One, Tilting Leaves [1995], and The Builder [2004]. She has also published books on literary criticism, including Six Uses of Fictional Symbols [2004] and Six Poetry Formats and the Transforming Image [2008]. She has received awards from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas from UMPIL, as well as from the Palanca and the Philippines Free Press. She was proclaimed National Artist for Literature in 1999. She died in 2011.
by buglaswritersjournal

Dumaguete

By DIANA T. GAMALINDA

there is a town where the roads crawl
on their bellies to the sky.
under storm,
the roads murmur why
the warrior, the lover,
must learn
while fallen and fettered
to the dimness
and futility
of returning
to a town where the roads mourn
a short fire
besieged by stormy sky.

Diana T. Gamalinda was a poet, and a fellow at the Silliman University National Writers Workshop. Her work is collected in Circle With Open Ends. She died in 1978. She was only 19 years old.
by buglaswritersjournal

The Bells Count in Our Blood

By MERLIE M. ALUNAN

“Every night at 8:00 we shall ring the bells for Father Romano, and we shall continue to do so until he is found.”
—The Redemptorist Community, Dumaguete City, September 1985

Every night just as we settle
To coffee or a mug of cold beer,
They ring the bells—
A crisp quick flurry first, then
Decorous as in a knell, ten counts.
Into the darkness newly fallen
The cadence calls for a brother lost.

At home as we try to wash off
With music and a little loving
The grime of markets from our souls—
The day’s trading of truth for bread,
Masks of honor, guises of peace—
The clear sounds infusing the air
Deny us the salve of forgetting.

We know for what they lost him,
Why expedient tyrants required
His name effaced, his bones hidden.
As we bend over the heads of children
Fighting sleep, not quite done with play,
The bells vibrating remind us how
Our fears conspires to seal his doom.

We could say to the ringers:
Your bells won’t bring him back,
But just supposing that it could,
What would you have?
A body maimed, perhaps, beyond belief—
Toes and fingers gone, teeth missing,
Tongue cut off, memory hacked witless.

The nights in our town
Are flavored with the dread
The bells salt down measured
From their tall dark tower.
It falls upon our raw minds wanting sleep.
Shall we stop them? Though we smart
We know they keep us from decay.

Shared in this keening,
A rhythm beating all night long
In our veins, truth is truth still
Though unworded. The bells
Count in our blood the heart of all
We must restore. Tomorrow, we vow,
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

Merlie M. Alunan spent time in different places in the Visayas and Mindanao at different times in her life and thus acquired a level of fluency in the major Visayan languages. She finished her Bachelor’s Degree in Education at the University of the Visayas, major in English; and her Master’s Degree in Literature at Silliman University. She taught in several schools all over the Visayas: Silliman University, Divine Word College in Tagbilaran City [now Holy Name University], and the University of the Philippines Visayas [Tacloban College] where she initiated creative writing workshops and intensified her advocacy to encourage the young to write in the native language. While doing her workshops with its specific advocacy, she became sharply aware of the lack of models for the aspiring Waray writer and the literal absence of any reading materials in the language. She has since published a collection of oral narratives entitled Susumaton published by Ateneo de Manila University Press.