mer-made

gone are the days of a clear, singing underworld now icebergs are made of forgotten plastics half way, photographed before it fin’lly sinks, sea turtles’re choking with once-kissed resin straw have we peeled your rainbow scales with our cruel claws? — 06.24.2020 ©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved. Photo via Unsplash This work is

our shining moment: a haibun

A few days before this moment, online weather forecast reported not just rainfall but a thunderstorm. More than half of June was eaten by the summer sun, it should not be surprising if the Philippines’ monsoon is here to take its part of the pie. Still, palm to palm, my love and I send whispers

come in, June

Come in. I am sorry for the lack of energy, would you like some lukewarm tea? Well, we are tired zombies, avoiding (or wait- ing) for the wind of death, we are suffocated not by the unseen killer but the cruel knee on our throat for centuries, (we chose to close our eyes on) well,

escapees: a tanka*

prisoned in cream-kissed- walls. outside, wheels re- tain its daily, restless toil. pair of wheat feet frozen in tiled snow, still, free hands’ ink, flows. — 05.27.2020 ©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved. Photo via Unsplash This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. — For dVerse Poetics: Make some room Felt

on aliens and cream borders: a haibun

Piet Mondrian, ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43, moma.org More than a year I have been living inside this box with no divisions. Cream borders keep me company without judging my daily dancing alone and my full-hearted concerts on my own. Identical squared-rooms from my right and left stood the same size as mine.  The closest left

dawning dreams: a 100-word story

It starts with the usual scene. The hibiscus bush void of bloom, filled with sharp twigs like fangs of the past, looking at him from his bedroom window. The door less-an-inch open like a defeated sigh. The bedsheet crumpled, free of human warmth. The duplicate cold key, slouched. The screech of tires against the gravel

husband and wife, lockdown edition: a quadrille

screeching tires roared back to life running away from fuming wife, leaving minty toothpaste uncapped, garlic burnt with bitter bite, lockdown birthing silly fights. yet once the stars start blending the night, wheels will return to arms so light, hush, hush, let’s not fight. — 05.05.2020 ©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved. Photo by

the garden of 17 syllables: a haibun for Basho

Five decades of wandering, in every step perhaps your heels planted seedlings of words, of love,  of wisdom, of life. So much of your history remains a hidden story. We’re you a slave, a samurai, a cook, a poet, or everything and more? We can read scrolls after scrolls but never can we know. A

inside a journalist’s mind: a book spine poem

wild embers die trying the fourth estate and still i rise. — 04.24.2020 ©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved. Photo by me This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. — For dVerse Finding poems in bookshelves

hopping inside a wonderland

if i should have a chosen pet perhaps it will be a little bunny, (i once had one, but she died just after day one choked on a loaf bread my dumb 18-year-old mind foolishly fed it; rest in peace, mogu, i still feel sorry for what i did to you) running around my beige-tiled