By Rodrigo Dela Peña
And news spread
all over the town, a virus, a fear
of contagion,
a panic. Muse, amuse me. Let me catch
the delirium,
feverish dreams to get lost in while wide
awake, the gift
of tongues. Let me pronounce the word
subversive:
plibustiero, pelbistero, palabistiero.
Each rivulet
contains a voice, murmurous, illicit ghost
of an echo
still ringing in the ears. All I know
is a fraction
of what can be known, the air’s omniscience.
How many birds
have come to roost, their feathers woven
into the foliage?
In the teeming wilderness, I have lost
count, unsure
of whose call belongs to whom, whose caw
and chittering
edges the night. Only the ground arrests
whatever falls,
ready to receive rain, untethered leaves,
a body
collapsing after being struck by a bullet.
A Filipino writer based in Singapore, Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr. is the author of Requiem, a chapbook. He is a recipient of the Palanca Award for Poetry in the Philippines, as well as awards from British Council Singapore's Writing the City.