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

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

spring reeks with laughter of birds

April air reeks of unperfumed killer floating with spring, bobbing as daffodils sing, there goes selfish whims ransacking shelves of kindness, in a bid to survive hunger for toilet paper arrived, common sense of supposed “high- er beings” flushed, hummingbirds, sparrows, laugh at us. — 04.21.2020 ©2020 Rosemawrites@A Reading Writer. All Rights Reserved. Photo via

mildewed memory

Mildew and mould hover freely inside the decade-age cabin, eventually welcoming a pair of sneakers, uncertainly wandering. Each step receives a pained, creaking answer. Unhurried climbing continues. One. Two. Three. Four. And more. Her gloved hand reaches for the rusted knob, still frozen with the last breath of winter. With pounding chest, she opens the