Readers' Pool - Max Trinidad

Readers' Pool - Jam Pascual

Wasabi

The plan was to play hard to get
That’s right

I wasn’t gonna just go givin’ myself away
I’m no easy catch
Can you really see me in fishnets?
No.

And I always find myself slippin’ out the holes
Swimmin’ back out to sea
I’d never been anybody’s sushi roll

But she has lips like wasabi

My eyes water every time we kiss
Makes me wish we had a porch swing and a little home
Makes me wish I could right wrongs
Instead of poems

The heart is a bullet that’s terrified of blood
Love is a windshield wiper in a hurricane
Nothing is ever clear
You mistake her name for the moon
Mistake porch lights for the stars
And sometimes, they are
Her constellations lead me home
Ten thousand shades of open
And if there’s one thing in this world I’ve ever known for sure
It’s that this girl is gonna crush me like a small bug
Leave me so freakin’ broken there’ll be body bags beneath my eyes
From nights I cried so hard the stars died

But I’m like, “Go ahead.”
I’m all yours

I would kiss you in the middle of the ocean during a lightning storm
Cuz I’d rather be left for dead than left to wonder what thunder sounds like
I’m not lookin’ for someone who can save me
Life rafts might keep you afloat but they rarely get you anywhere and I’ve got places I wanna go so break me in two
Peel back my rib cage and cover every page of my heart with love poems you will burn someday
The most fertile lands were built by the hands of volcanoes
And I wanna know what grows beneath the drone of hallmark and roses
I want your goodbye to feel like explosives
Your lips, a burning building without fire escapes
Your hips, the gates of hell if I know if heaven exists
But this will do just fine
I wanna feel you like lifelines on the palms of Jesus when the nails went through
Is that really, really creepy?

Just in case it is
Let me also say I want you sleepy-eyed in the morning
Waking at my side like a warm summer sky born from so much softness, the horizon cries every time nightfall comes to take you
Let me also say I wanna make you sandwiches
And soup
And peanut butter cookies
Though, the truth is peanut butter is actually really bad for you cuz they grow peanuts in old cotton fields to clean the toxins out of the soil
But hey, you like peanut butter and I like you!
Let me also say I’ve never seen anything more gorgeous than you were that night
The moon bending through the window blinds
I told time by the light casting shadows across your face
While you told me the story
“My grandparents were married for 63 years. On the day my grandfather died, he laid in bed and said nothing but ‘Love, love, love love’ then he puckered his lips and kissed my grandmother for the last time.”

Love, love, love love is like sunshine
Sometimes you have to get burned to know you were there
I wanna know that I’m here
Every single part of me
My heart open
As the rivers eyes the first time it sees the ocean
My God, look at those waves
Listen to that thundering tide
Can you imagine anything more frightening?
Can you imagine anything more alive?

Wasabi [Andrea Gibson Cover] - Jam Pascual

Electric Seashell Results

In the Land of the Giants (Excerpt)
Glenn Sevilla Mas

MAN
(Softly.)
Maghimaya ikaw, Mariya
magkalipay ikaw, buta ikaw ti grasya
ang Ginuong D’yos rugyan kanimo.
Nahamut-an ikaw labaw sa tanan nga mga babayi
kag nahamut-an man ang bunga
kang imo busong nga si Hisus …

That was my first flight ever, Mila. So I was tense while we were preparing for takeoff.

(Softly.)
Santa Mariya, nanay kang Dyos
ipangamuyo mo kami nga mga makasasala
kadya kag sa tion kang amun kamatayun.

It was an early morning flight from Iloilo to Manila, the first of several that will take me to America. I remember that flight vividly.

I remember staring out the window a few seconds before takeoff. I remember seeing a group of people just outside the airport terminal. I remember seeing them waving at the plane. They were bidding us goodbye. And then …

(With urgency.)
I peered closer and immediately scanned the waving people’s features in a desperate attempt to identify the hand, the face, the figure that I knew so well from childhood. Where is he? Which one is he? So you made good on your promise, didn’t you? Because you said you’d be there when I take my first flight. I am sorry I didn’t become a pilot but this is the best I could do. And I am on a plane, am I not? That’s why you came. You came to see me off. But please! Which one are you? Which one are you, Father? Which one?

-----

Glenn Sevilla Mas is a Ford Foundation International Fellow who earned his MFA in Playwriting from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. His plays have been presented at the Callan Theater and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC; the Top Floor Theatre in Baltimore, Maryland; the Lion Theatre in Philadelphia; the CCP, the Black Box Theatre in Shanghai, People’s Republic of China, and the Rizal Mini Theater and Fine Arts Theater of the Ateneo de Manila. He has represented the country in theater festivals and conferences in France, Australia, Bangladesh, and the United States. A member of the Board of Directors of the Philippine Center of International PEN, he has won nine Palanca awards for his plays and has three books published by the UST Publishing House. He is an assistant professor and the Theater Arts Program Coordinator of the Ateneo de Manila.


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