“While" and Other Poems

By March Abuyuan-Llanes

JoJo Austria, Voyager, 2021. Oil on canvas, 19x29 inches.
Image description: Abstract horizontal landscape painting in shades of cool greys and blues interrupted by thin streaks of bright orange and yellow, with a central figure that suggests the white billowing sails of a clipper ship.

“Anak,”

I remember you humming into
my mentholated temples, your
fingers a wind rushing through
the fever of my hair's fresh
wilderness. What would you
say to me if you saw me now?
My head on my friend's
comforter, just as wet and
weeping as it was on your lap
all those nights ago.
It's funny how it takes just
the smoke of a few burning flowers
and some toadstools in my belly
to make me feel the weight
of my heavy little heart again.
It's funny how you would've
listened if I told you
all of this, at least, I tell
myself now. I look up
at the ceiling fan above and
see the full moon I haven't even seen
all night, and, suddenly, I'm marooned
once more on a raft
in an endless ocean
between my memory
and imagination
of you. In the windows,
the malunggay trees are swaying
to a wind I cannot feel, and I hear
your voice falling like raindrops behind
the glass. I cannot make
out a single word. I only want you
to tell me: I'll always
be too young
to understand.

JoJo Austria, Life Is Not A Walk in an Open Field, 2019. Oil on canvas, 48x30 inches.
Image description: Vertical landscape painting of a grey road leading to mountains on the horizon in gradations of orange, greys and white; the road is blocked by a saw horse and ends abruptly halfway to the horizon.

Footnotes for a Hangover

I.

Allow me
            to misspeak,
which is to say,
            to misuse
this tongue of mine.

How simple it is
            to want,
how much simpler
            to take,
like this.

You could've been nothing
            but unwritten, dancing
beside my lover, but instead,
            you said
yes.

Somewhere, there's a video
            of him kissing
me kissing you
            kissing all the other men
you mistook me for that night.

Everything else happened in between
            the wetnesses of your mouth: your arm
around mine when we slipped out
            to buy you cigarettes, my hand always grasping
at the smooth hairs of your nape.

II.

We hardly danced, did
            we? Stumbling at
each other's heels
             only to get
nowhere.

On that couch,
            I lost my palm
under your shirt
            when I reached for
all of you, blind.

Then, we were talking:
            my voice an arm's length away
in the music; yours
            smiling and ruined
against my ear.

How desire,
            you teach me,
can so swiftly turn
            into
mercy.

So, I held your face
            under mine and kissed you
again and
            again
and again.

III.

Tell me what was left
            of either of us
when you buried your head
            in my shoulder
outside of the empty club.

My stranger, I know
            there are as little answers
as meanings
            to a memory
such as this.

I want this
            to be an apology,
a confession,
            a litany, and
none of these at all.

At least, the city kept
            silent when we went
our ways: I,
            with my perfect lover
to come home with;

you, alone and still
            handsome in the car window,
getting on your motor taxi
            and riding into
the morning after.

JoJo Austria, Hold On Dear Life, 2021. Oil on canvas, 39x29 inches.
Image description: Vertical landscape painting that suggests a bright full moon against a grey sky with wildly moving mists or clouds above a dark sea from which a purple rocket with red tail fins is launched.

While

we're not there yet, I want
to watch the talahib with you
in the windows:
                        For miles and
miles, how swiftly they pass
us as memories of cirrus
clouds and seafoam strewn
all over the mountainsides. I want
to ask if you also dream
or wonder about what lies hidden
and eternal amongst
their stalks—or if you
already know. Windswept
we have been
down this highway and bent
namelessly to these last summers
of grief and
monsoons. While we're still so
far away, I want
you to tell me everything
about prayer and my mother
when she was my age. I want
to sit with you for as long
as this drive takes,
and look out at the fields
of heavenward feathers as white
as your undyed hair, rushing past
and watching us, too.

---

March Abuyuan-Llanes is a writer and poet from Quezon City, Philippines. They have work in This Is Southeast Asia, Ghost City Review, Haluhalo Journal, and elsewhere. They are the editor of LIGÁW anthology, an anthology zine of militant poetry from emerging LGBTQ+ Filipino writers and are a member of Kinaiya: Kolektib ng mga LGBTQIA++ na Manunulat as well as Artista ng Rebolusyong Pangkultura (ARPAK). Currently, they are taking their MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman. You can follow them on Twitter and Instagram @magmartsa and find more of their work on magmartsa.neocities.org/writing.html.

*

Julio “JoJo” Austria is a contemporary Filipino artist whose works focus on urbanization and migration. Austria finished his Bachelor’s in painting at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila. He is the recipient of an Asian Artist Full Fellowship grant from the Vermont Studio Center, a Joan Mitchell Foundation award and residency at Ox-Bow School for the Arts, a Ruth Katzman at the Arts Student League of New York, a NYFA grant, and a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts. His work has been exhibited in Manila, Bangkok, Singapore, Berlin, London, New York, and Vienna. He lives and works in New York City.

---