It’s not yours until you bleed on it, until it tastes the kiss of Vancouver rain

A chiselled jaw rattles my pace As a golden cross dangles just below That luscious organ Where crisp ash blackens

When ends were short And long drives down bleak highways Restless and dusted Seemed to distort our reality

An atlantic ocean leaped off-- A crack in the ledge Twenty seven circled cage

Nothing quite says “It’s time to duel” like vigorously licking leftover raw egg goop off of a silicone spoon

Fake a smile when your eyes meet, when they spot you grabbing baked beans or browsing the KPOP section on Spotify.

I still think of home when I think of you Though the walls have fared better days And the light crashes every now and again

My lola is the kind of person to rise earlier than the sun

flat cap and cane gravel voice backyard garden of eden

she speaks no english // smiles only at her husband // loves you like winter sun at 3p.m. on a winter’s day

Magic happened here tonight, the fireflies were whispering, The wind was blowing breathless and every star was listening

I fix my mind on the midnight stars and swoon, For the vastness swipes the breath from me, I see the holy land smeared ’fore my eyes

Maybe that’s one reason why translation is not much-practiced in the Philippines

after all this time, i finally look back and realise it could have been you.

Would you buy flowers for yourself? Can you tell me all the people who would? The people who have?

How many spoonfuls of shame must you measure out To start the recipe of my humanity?

Forgive me, my arrival has disrupted your sentences. gender is such a hoax, isn’t it?

I subscribe to a dozen magazines one night because these are such good deals and I've reignited an affair from years ago

when the sun goes down we step Together in glass slippers Far afar by miles, near with fright Of being predated, chased, killed

the pen pierces the point in the plane of my graphing paper, at rest before it swoops, curves, and loops, where am I?