FIESTANG BALEN: Biography of a Town Fiesta
Concepcion, Tarlac, Philippines in the 1920s
by Lino L. Dizon

For anyone who is neither taga-Concepcion nor a native of this town in southern Tarlac, Central Luzon, Philippines, there is always the query about its observance of two fiestas: Fiestang Patrun and Fiestang Balen. A taga-Concepcion or a native would readily elucidate the matter with a mélange of piety: it would be sacrilegious to integrate the Fiestang Patrun, the feast

Mail Order Bride
by Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor

When you come to meet my family in the barrio, you
already have the envelopes and papers in your pocket.
You let us sit you at the head of the table beneath
the wood carving of the Last Supper and serve you an
evening meal. We listen to you marvel at the taste of
spicy chicken soup laced with tamarind. We do not tell
you that the chicken is our last meat, that the
portion you take is more than enough to feed my three
youngest sisters.

Needle
by Linh Dinh

A needle plying the bloodstream will protect the body against cuts, dismemberments, decapitations, etc. It should be at least three inches long, of stainless steel, sewing variety.

Whenever a notched knife or an ax breaks surface of the skin, needle will rush instantaneously to the violated spot to thwart blow and prevent muscular laceration.

Needle travelling day and night beneath dermis, inside lumen, plowing plasma and platelets aside, cleaving blood

Imago

As soon as we became men
my brother and I wore skirts.
We pinched our skirt-fronts into tents
for our newly-circumcised penises, the incisions
prone to stick painfully to our clothing.

I was partial to my sister’s plaid skirt,
a school uniform she outgrew; my brother favored
one belonging to my grandmother, flowers
showering down his ankles. 
By this stage, the skin around the tips
of our penises was swollen the size
of dwarf tomatoes. 

As a cure, my mother

Moths
by Joel M Toledo

The children know better.
They scamper in and out of the darkness,
celebrating the narrow transitions
between sorrow and bliss. Right now,
my sister is climbing the stairs.
She feels a sense of triumph; 
I hear it in her laughter. 
The harsh, yellow light recedes
and bursts around each footstep.
We all go up the staircase. 
Moths of various sizes hug the wooden walls.

People are murmuring downstairs.
Their speech is too old.
My mother says