Three movements, typhoons, and being thankful

I guess this month is sort of surprisingly productive for me.

My poem “Three Movements on Anatomy” is up in Stone Telling Magazine.

Many thanks to editors Rose Lemberg and Shweta Narayan for this opportunity and their feedback. Thanks as well to friends and mentors alike who took their time to help me with this piece. Do check the poem out and let me know what you think.

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Other news (if you still didn’t know): recently Typhoon Sendong hit Mindanao and as of this afternoon, death tolls have hit more than 1,000. You can help and donate goods and othersuch supplies to those in need.

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It’s so surreal that all of this is happening. I mean, halfway across the archipelago people have lost their homes and loved ones and just this afternoon I had a nice time hanging out with my friends. I don’t even know why I find this weird because this sort of thing happens all the time: people suffer while others are happy; sometimes we can tie it to an apparent cause, sometimes it just happens. But it’s not how things should be, you know? I feel idealistic for thinking this way.

I’ve spent a hefty amount of the past few months feeling sad and cranky about my life (depressive episodes, et al) but the past few days catching up with people and just laying back have eased a lot of myself back in. And I guess I just wish for more of that in the world, you know? Like, just more times with people we love and those we can sit down with for hours talking about Stuff, et al, not worrying about Everything Else That Makes Us Sad, Stressed, and/or Uptight.

Christmas is about to roll in and I am broke (I spent my mother’s Christmas money present buying people gifts and I didn’t even get to buy things for all the people I wanted to give presents to) and this is the season I got the least amount of presents (because almost all my friends are broke too haha) but somehow it feels like one of the best holidays so far. Just hanging out, meeting up with people I haven’t seen in 100 years. Pretty much that simple to be happy, surprisingly. Right now I’m thankful for a lot of the things and people I have, the things I’ve achieved up to this point. Life. I’m thankful life is being good, despite all the setbacks, and I wish it kept getting better.

Season’s Greetings to you all.

Examination

I got the news earlier this afternoon in the coffeeshop but only had my iPad at hand.

Anyhoo, the nice folks over at Free Press featured my poem “Examination“.

Yay! It’s also amusingly timely as I am having exams this week.

Do click the link if you have the time. I had fun making that piece. Let me know what you think.

Also- dedicated to my dearest medschool friends.

(…who are fighting the fight- we have 8 more exams to go. Pediatrics went down with a bang this morning. In a few hours it’s Pathology hooheehoo I have so much to read plumbum kulchitsky cell, wish me luck!)

I hope everyone pulls through exams. All righty, that’s all for now. Byebye!

Poems flying out

Uhm yes, hi. This is an update about some of my stuff that recently made it to publication.

Today, my poem “Three Bodies” is up at The Philippines Free Press [July 9 issue]. Show your love by buying a copy at your local bookstore.

A few weeks ago I also found out I’d be a part of Under The Storm: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Poetry. The anthology is scheduled to be released around the same time as the opening of MOV International Film, Music, & Literature Festival (September 2, I think). Below is a complete list of the contributors (Thanks to Tilde and Tin for posting).

One of many methods

The problem with anger is
it leaves no room
for the imagination. Consider taking
a long stick, sharpening its edges
with a knife (you may wish to use
later on). Imagine all the soft portions of skin covering
the vulnerable areas of a body impaled. Describe what you see.
What is the color of the blood? Qualify
its viscosity. Do not say it oozes. Tell me
of rivers and the diameter of wounds. Describe
what you see. Peel off the skin
if it pleases you; feel
the edges of bone. Let your fingers unhinge
arteries from where they cling. If you dislike piercing
barriers of skin, try areas already left
open: eyes, mouth, ears. The body
before you will offer no resistance. Observe
the organs as they struggle. Place your palm
on the soft cushion of a lung, the hushed pumping
of a dying heart. Watch the light leave
the body’s eyes. Describe what lies
before you. Speak of how blood dries into flecks
on the rough surface of your hands, how you hold
knife and stick close to your chest,
as though they were your own appendages
waiting for another moment to unfurl.

Catalogue of My Dead Friends

The one on the table by the entrance had an exit
wound more prominent than the point
of entry. Everyone believed it was a bullet

but we were more taken by his almost-faded tattoos, trying
to decipher what names were crowded by crow and vine, swirling
in his hardened, wood-brown body. We never found the truth

(save for a classmate who recoiled his gloved fingers,
months later: the discovery of how this man had steel orbs stuck
within his scrotum. We didn’t dare dissect

In the Beginning:

We were the only ones left.  

Survivors.

If you ask me, we were just two stupid kids who managed to sleep in the basement long enough to miss it all. We didn’t even hear them disappear, or how it happened. We just knew we were the only ones left. It’s like that feeling you notice picking at your chest when you figured you loved someone. Almost the same, except this one was stronger, and it didn’t make us feel happy.

Now all we had was the mess of the world – a view of the sea reeking of sulfur and selenium, hills made of dust, bones and garbage planted on what remained of buildings, and so on.

From a distance we heard a voice telling us we could remake the world as we wished.

At a price, the quiet voice from the sky said, For each part of the world you want to make anew, you have to exchange a part of your bodies.

As if being the only ones left wasn’t such a hefty price in itself.

—

Everything I write keeps getting shorter and shorter. This was an idea I got while studying the ears and paranasal sinuses for my exams. Strange.

Anatomy lesson:

He named my bones as I held out my hand –

Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pointing
aloud, his fingers dancing

above mine – as though it would make things easier

to understand.

—

anatomy mock practicals tomorrow!

and god, sorry if a lot of posts start with “anatomy -” >_>’ can’t seem to help it.

Medschool, et cetera

They say you should be happy where you are: thankful for the opportunity to pore over an endless number of chapters discussing the human body – its innervations and makings, because not everyone gets to do this, what you do, et cetera.

Not everyone gets the chance to earn about the failures of the human condition this thoroughly, they say. It is good for your future, a lot of people will want you, will need you, et cetera.

Spend every morning inhaling the smell of the dead like it were sunflowers blooming over the remains of a demolished house, unpack the five or so books from your heavy bag into your locker and let them rest with the three dissecting kits you’ve gotten used to leaving, all the while mindful of greeting the dead “good morning”, reminding them they are dead, blessed, and granted eternal sleep much to the advantage of students like yourself who would later on in the day proceed to slice them to bits for the greater cause of learning, et cetera.

It always sounds simple – to say “happy” and “chance”, assuming they run on intersecting lines as anything you’re made to do from now on. The arteries and veins you have to memorize, imagine them in your own body while suppressing the urge to slit through your own skin, see what’s inside, how you work, make it all much easier. Repeat as necessary, et cetera.

Trepanation

They thought the best way was to drill a hole
through the skull as the patient lay inert

on the operating table, eyes open and pinned to the ceiling
as the physician picks at his head, rearranging

the right folds of tissue so the illness knows
how it is now unwelcome, packs its bags, finds

its way to the exit. There were always risks,
of course. Science could only do so much.

The disease, surprised and aggrieved
from being sent away, takes with it memories

it has grown fond of. The ones it believes
are its own – like the first feel of rain

on a summer afternoon, the sound
of a deceased mother’s voice, the color

of an old lover’s hair, a list of desires
the patient chose to keep secret. The loss of memory

is of course painless and necessary as the removal of bone
that began the procedure, leaving

the cranium to breathe, opened
to its softest pulp until all the ill air is good

as gone, and the sheet of cut skin sewn back
as the good doctor lifts a gloved palm

to his sweaty forehead, declaring
the operation successful. The patient sighs

in relief; the gaps in memory unapparent
as the sutures keeping the skull closed.

And who could blame them for believing
in the strangest of solutions?

I. Anatomy Class

We know so little of these bodies: these people
with their faces clothed in gauze, skin

hard and crusted to the color of earth,
stiff and prone on steel beds. Unyielding

as we slice out new wounds
with unpracticed knives, exposing

one muscle after another, feeling
through gloved hands the hardness

of bone, leaving the necessary markings as we make our way
through each appendage, turning the cut parts into paths

we would need to retrace later on
in the roofs of our skulls, every dissected limb

floating as a name: faceless,
without a body.