More than one! By Jing Villamil AND so it came to pass, that we tackle a subject we would rather not. In-laws! Its first known use as a term was way back in 1894. What term did they use then before that year? Originally, it meant “anyone of a relationship not natural”. Unnatural? As […]
Feelings
Feelings
Split ends! By Jing Villamil IN the midst of the pandemic, there is this story of love. It has nothing to do with the disease. It is a story that would have happened anyway, anyhow, any which time. He was the youngest of three sons of farmers. He dropped out of school when he […]
Feelings
We live! Again! By Jing Villamil YEARS ago, when her dawn was a bright star rising and dusk was but colours weaning, waning, waiting to burst out again – Emmanuelle wrote a poem on déjà vu and it went on chirpily: Known you before! Before this birth, a death; and beyond that death, a […]
Feelings
Find this child! By Jing Villamil YOU are the mould from which your child was cast. Until he be the mould himself, from which his own, too, is cast. On and on the cycle, it ceases not. Of the smooth twists, dips and hollows and the sharp-angled roughs. Your child may be the tinniest […]
Feelings
POUR FOuRTH THIS TALE! By Jing Villamil SHE called. She, who lived through Covid19, but whose husband did not. She, who dreams of him still. Through the screen, we touched fives. At once, with no prod – tears, streams poured forth from her. Mine eyes, I closed; but lids are not doors, not walls […]
Feelings
The Third Tale! (A monosyllabic prosepoem) By Jing Villamil SHE dreams of him still. How could she not? In her dream, she was there, when he shrugged off his cage of bones and thin flesh and tired black-blue veins. She dreamed she was there when they tore out the tubes and all which clicked […]
Feelings
A talk with a vamp! (A monosyllabic prose poem) By Jing Villamil HERE I am, back to this place I left, this swath of land that thought it had lost me. It has not! My clan had sprung from here, too. One does not let go of home, though it was just once a […]
Feelings
Lull a bye! By Jing Villamil MORE than thirty Filipino seafarers remain missing in chilly waters off southwestern Japan after their Panamanian cargo ship capsized amidst the onslaught of Typhoon Maysak the first week of September. Truthfully, there is no getting over the faces of anxiety, anger, grief. The kind they go through: the […]
Feelings
So grand! By Jing Villamil THEY were the new-born, the toddler, the pre-school, grader and high school student, the binatilyo and dalagita, the binata and dalaga, the proud groom and the blushing bride, the mother nursing, caring for and teaching her child, the father off to the daily grind. They were not born old. […]
Feelings
Gone for a walk! By Jing Villamil THIS story was a whisper, told loudly above engine roars. Once upon a summertime, once upon my island. It was told by cousins, doubling as backseat drivers, while I was battling the narrow unpaved road hugging the island’s many bends, the mountain on one side, and a […]