Schmuckumentary
Written, directed, and constantly second-guessed by Michael.
Category: Poetry
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The Angriest Burger said it would hurt. The copywriter promised that. Red buns, dyed for full effect, loud enough to dare you before you taste anything. I even detoured to the drive-thru. A small decision that felt like commitment. First bite. I waited. That’s it? There’s spice, yes. A small, polite heat at the back…
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We are wearing March incorrectly. The calendar insists on heat— its old contract with sweat, with shirts that cling by noon, with afternoons that press softly against the ribs. Today arrives as a cold front filed under the wrong century, a breeze that does not belong to this latitude. Morning after morning, the window is…
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I wrote four poems about you from a dozen too-sweet cookies, two plates of pork guts, an unkept promise to teach me how to parallel park, and a look that lasted half a second longer than safety allowed. By any reasonable math, we were nothing— a crumpled receipt, a muted afternoon, loose change warming my…
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Begin with water. Cold if you can stand it. Let it pull the day off you— the tasks that lingered too long, the words that stayed lodged in your throat, the almost-kiss that never happened. Cup your hands. Notice how little it takes to undo a face. Rinse. Now, the toner. Think of your skin…
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Araw-araw, we line up like utensils in a drawer— nested, used, polished by repetition. Tissue. Tray. Kanin. Ulam. A sequence of survival. Sa whiteboard kung saan binubura ang bukas at sinusulat ulit every week: Monday: Tinola with papaya Tuesday: Chicken adobo Wednesday: Nilagang baboy (too much luya) Thursday: Pochero/afritada Friday: Ginisang munggo or something we’ll…
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We are lucky— we can leave the ground. The earth makes its claim. We answer with flight. I do not remember when the hand began interrupting the morning, holding bread already torn into smaller futures. We gathered— accepted the terms. I took what I could carry in the beak I was given, this small allowance…
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Outside, the city is an endless red of brake lights, a crush of steel and faith, millions moving through heat and rain. It grinds out its survival, and somehow, inside its weight, I become less. There is a strange safety in being nobody to everyone. The room is warm. The AC hums. Motorbikes thread the…
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Are you touching him after circling the island on a borrowed motorbike— salt crusting your hair, my name already rinsed away? In your hotel room, do you cup his chest the way you once steadied my doubts, checking if he is softer, smaller, less of a mountain than me? Do you stare at the hills…
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I do not ask for the foam to cradle me like a mother, nor for the currents to be a paved road toward your cabin. No. I want the Pacific to strike me until it breaks my ribs, until it swallows me where the light is drowned gold, and my blood remembers its alchemy, until…
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We were victims of the curse of stagnance. Who’s to blame for the tide that never came? Maybe when we’re brave enough, we will know. Maybe when we’re men enough, we will understand. A new river has broken from the ground. Flowing. Quenching. The moon smiles for me. I kiss the shore one last time…
Schmuckumentary 