Antecedent*

So, in the looking back, there I shall find the answers hooking hands, playing with the familiarity of lying together.

Which? To each?

Perhaps I’ve been foolish but I take nothing back.

(first published in foam:e)

Diver*

I have been keeping my silence tucked inside the mustn’t-haves.  You are still. I tease out the emerging prohibitions of confidence. I suppose giving out the danger signs is in itself a signal to be enclosed, to invite enclosure like

Brave Woman
by Grace R. Monte de Ramos

I am a mother of sons.
Two joined the army when they were young;
There was not enough money for school,
They had no skills for jobs in foundries
And factories, and it was easy to sign up
And learn how to handle a gun.

I am a mother of sons, two sons
And one, the youngest, now gone.
In his youth he was taken
By men whose names I never will learn.
I only know they were soldiers, like my sons,
Cradling fearsome guns.
He was a fine young

from “Commodities: An Autobiography”
Overseas Filipino Worker
By Eileen R. Tabios

In 1901, just after the Americans took over the civil administration of the Philippines, young Filipinos—in quest for a better life—went to work in the pineapple plantations in Hawaii. Thus began the Filipino Diaspora that has brought millions of Filipinos to different countries in the world today.
—Perry Diaz, a frequent internet commentator on Filipino topics

My cousin Lory was

12 July 2006, Wednesday 9:27 A GMT-08
by Barbara Jane Reyes

“Of us eleven, there are four of us still alive. Rosalia was 96 when she died. She is the mother of Teresing. Julio (he is in Mindanao) is one hundred and one years old, and he walks like a frog.” Papa gets up from the sofa to demonstrate. Legs spread wide, bends low at each knee. Spine virtually parallel to the floor. Hands behind the back, clasped. Takes a few steps, and laughs. Goes back to the sofa and sits.

Bali in Retrospect
by Arlene Ang

Things I remember most snap like a postcard slideshow: beach peddlers on my back, a stray dog lounging on a deserted beach, nasi goreng and table napkins that summon old grease, brem bali pool to drown dinner, geckoes improvising a shadow theatre behind lampshades. I quickly send the peddlers to the devil together with their insistence and 1-dollar watches, the dog must be sunburnt by now, brown rice hatted by sunnyside egg rouses a saliva