Monday, May 22, 2017

ALOYSIUSI LIONEL POLINTAN

After Alex Tizon’s article "My Family’s Slave" as regards Eudocia Tomas Pulido 
(The Atlantic, June 2017)



Reverse Longing

she misses her plate of steamed broccoli served
every breakfast in Minnesota:

her hometown of
milkful fantasies sautéed in deep-fried anchovies,

she misses everything about her birthplace, the
musky scent of her bed sheets after a rowdy night

of midnight love, glossy doorknobs she always
touched to relish her nook’s modest air.

milk, broccoli, anchovies, bones of townsfolk
sardines, plates shaken a bit,

splinters of black coffee on the centerpiece

could not be found under nipa, bamboo, rattan,
only swaddling linens

for healing chicken pox
and phlegm blended with rust.




In Fetal Position

In fetal position
I think of a poem’s saddest lines
While eyeing the room’s darkness
I imagine cruelties
When gripping my knees
Thoughts of resurrection fill me
Listening to my own breaths
Night chill hardly seizes me
Sticking to that posture
Impending nightmares wake me up
Biting my lower lip and tongue
I pay attention to every heartbeat
In fetal position
I think of a poem’s saddest lines
Night chill hardly seizes me
I imagine cruelties



Aloysiusi Lionel Polintan is a Senior High School Coordinator of Divina Pastora College in Gapan City, Nueva Ecija. He loves reading and writing poetry, and everything that ranges from Bob Dylan to Hozier, and from Mahalia Jackson to Christina Aguilera. He is doing research on intangible cultural heritage of Southern Novo Ecijanos. He maintains a blog, http://renaissanceofanotebook.blogspot.com


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