-kimee
As early as the mothers sun their
month-old babies in the day, beauty
parlors in the barangay
at the foot of the dumpsite
are open. All five of these can
anytime replace the cracked crow of
cocks in the neighborhood.
The cocks, cooped, shrivelled, puny and
no longer the phallic legends that
they were, are ill from yesterday's derby.
The gay parloristas, though, don't seem
to be at all weary despite
their nightly cockfights.
Why be?
Everyday is a good commerce
of snips, slashes, bobs and shrill
uranist cackles about the town
prostitute's genuflections in dark
damp corners.
This is juicy breakfast fare
masterfully served by the transvestite with
his utensils of pusher and nipper clearing, cleaning and scraping off
shavings of nail, dust, relics of the weeks scavenging;
tribulations
accumulating into
a heap on a spoon not even today's
rice can fill.
4 comments:
from robert using miss h's acount:
wow! i think the structure of your poem is very reflective of its content. i'm refering to the fact that its last stanza is smaller than the rest.
kim i'm sure you wrote this that fateful day you gave payatas a visit, didn't you?
the first few lines instantly teleported me to payatas. you can't blame me though, the mere mention of the word dumpsite was a giveaway. haha
there are some lines in this poem that i have to vacantly read through or even skip because they conjure horrid images in my mind. which means it's quite an effective poem! haha
work in progress. honestly, before i go on writing another poem, i wish to polish this first. like do the "genuflections" need to be defined by a word or something? I'm quite unsure if it gives away what the persona (correct?) means.
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