Order
Night market like theater foyer:
Booths, display tables, counters.
Christmas tree starlight winks.
Synthetic rose-cut, baguette-cut,
Navette-cut stones set in artificial
Silver and gold for the neck, ears,
Wrists, ankles. Branded imitations
In rectangle boxes, to be fitted,
Feet comfy felt against asphalt.
Nylon, cotton canvas, polyester,
Leather bags egging the shoulder
Or back to unsling the worn,
Shoppers like assessing
Characters traipsing from gazebo
To gazebo, as if on stage, lights
On collarless appeal:
Printed words, embossed symbols,
Impressionist colors blending
In the eyes, vicarious part’s
Catch phrases. The eager
Eye zeroes: Transcendence DVD
Starring Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall,
Paul Bettany. Loudspeaker:
Rapper’s Silent Night paronomasia
Competing with toots, horns, fireworks,
Hawked affordability, prices weighed
Against offstage authenticity in a fair
Where goods look real. The performer
Haggles, but this is all show.
I seek sweet smoke from fanned
Charcoals, barbecue stands,
Choosing chicken legs and thighs
Brushed with banana ketchup.
Fish sauce, vinegar, chili, calamansi
For more hunger the more I eat,
Coke Zero, ten hanging rice,
Yearend fashionably reflective,
Faceted goneness shared at
Tables. I choose to be alone
With my excuses, celebrate
My hardheaded sneaks.
The doctor warned of indulgence
But my visit (to appease others)
Faker than things I don’t
Really need. Tomorrow, New Year,
Also true to my reasons. From
Tomorrow to the next year-end
Entice reasonable in-betweens.
Dexter
Named after Showtime’s Miami
Metro blood spatter analyst,
His calls disturbing my sleep,
Rushing out like uncaged rabbit,
Sniffing leafy breasts, wood armpits
Grass bellies, flower thighs, dew
On bonsai torso, lifting leg to spray
His traces. The pavement gleams like
Bathed fur, Black Dalmatian spots
In asphalt. Could he reconstruct
Shadow shifts with his nose, nocturnal
Trysts of his kind? How many stolen
Moments fade from plain smell,
How many mounting for a quickie
Before dawn lifts the starry blanket,
Heating the air with canine love,
His excitement disturbing my sleep?
Eureka smell and he arches his back,
Spot in the grass found to drop
What the neighbor will sweep.
Cats on the Roof
After hours of listening
In darkness, I’m at last
Hearing what stillness between
Sounds has been telling me:
Let it remain a mystery
Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines. His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Windhover, Dark Matter, Poetry Quarterly, Star*Line and Burning Word, recently in Pedestal Magazine, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Poetry Super Highway and Digital Papercut, forthcoming in Anglican Theological Review, Penwood Review, Poetry Pacific, Mystic Nebula. His chapbook, Pictures of the Floating World, has been published by Kind of a Hurricane Press. He is working on a number of chapbooks and two full-length poetry collections, Multiverse and 100 Acrostic Poems.
