The Jeepney: Cultural Symbol or Tired Relic?
by Clinton Palanca and Marck Rimorin (please click here)
Elitism in the time of Duterte
by Katrina Stuart Santiago (please click here)
Working Clothes
Gelacio Y. Guillermo
Hung on the nail, the working clothes
Provide the wall a force of character
Preventing it to crumble down
In utter meaninglessness.
The clothes, made to last for life,
Made and repaired, relax
Their threads and muscles
As they lie suspended on a nail
Grown lean with the habit
of waiting. They smell of a spent
Day, a lump of sweat
In a room without windows.
They breathe through the pores
Of their skins like animals,
Tied in a sty for the night,
Without warmth, except what
Their own breathing provides.
Dissolving into the formless
Manner of sleep, they loosen
Nerves arms legs from the
Tautness of the body, patched up
With bits and ends of a hanging
Life. The stains on these clothes
Are permanent, their colors fade
In poor surroundings, their gnawed
Edges are inconsolable in their
Cries of need. They shall wear
Their bodies before they go to pieces.
Ronald McDonald
Marne Kilates
Be not contrite about the smile on your face,
Ronald McDonald.
The grieving mask of theater wouldn’t suit you,
It will crack the pancake around your mouth.
Keep a happy face
When you pull the wool over our faces:
Hamburgers are good for our urgent hungers,
The children love you
For your catsup and your sundaes,
Despite your mustard, cucumber and tomatoes.
You bring employment to our nation,
You keep pure your potatoes.
Never mind if it’s only a starveling’s pittance,
After the overheads and middlemen,
That’s left to our farmers at La Trinidad;
You know they are glad, straight from the heart,
That you’ve your finger in our salad.
Neither bother if the impeccable
Accents and complexions of the graduates
Of your Hamburger University
(Living images of unassailable good manners)
Intimidate our neighbors,
The stitcher in the garment factory,
The parttimer in the binding department:
You apportion the calories—
Precious Third World commodity—
If only for the day-off, the downtown Sunday.
Your gleaming floors, spotless counters,
Asceptic straw dispensers,
Make us aware of the grime behind our ears,
The grumble in our gut,
The pang in our wallet.
We natives must eat good food:
Those golden brown patties of authentic beef,
Glowing with virtue on our TV sets,
Packaged and priced in the Styrofoam smartness
Of the local franchise.
Thank you, yellow-clad, redhead funnyman,
For luring our wages into the Home Office,
For these golden brown blessing
Of the American Way of Life,
For these golden brown lumps of Free Enterprise,
Foreign Exchange, Technical Advice,
Transfer of Technology, Economic Cooperation,
Manifest Destiny.
My Life in the News
Fatima Lim Wilson
We eat best with our hands.
Chewing fish eyes,
Picking our teeth with the baby bones
Of a half egg, half duck.
In the absence of delicacies,
We swallow snow and our own hot air.
We get full, humming our sweetest songs
Syrupy with moonlight and sadness.
How happy we look always,
Showing off the caves of our mouths.
And how we dance! Fishlike, serpentine,
Birdsure between the bamboo poles,
Balancing crowns of candle fire
Upon our heads. Watch us leap!
Creep through barbed wire, dodging bullets.
We have a gift for turning into smaller things.
The guards at the bases thought they were
Shooting down pigs.
Years under the yoke have made our necks
Pliant. We nod like windblessed flowers.
Flowers scattered the world over, from
Singapore to Paris, watching
Over powdered babies, or being watched
Through beer and cigarette breezes
As we open and close, open and close,
Generous as gods with our secrets.
We are “brownfaced, under five feet,
Blackhaired, browneyed.” Harmless
When kept at a distance, remote
As our scattered islands. But
Never stop watching us. When
We can shrink no more, we vanish.
Finding no tracks, you grow alarmed
For who now will tell you what to do
In the face of your shadow’s disappearance?
