Justin lives in Pasay, Metro Manila. His work has appeared in Alien Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, MudRoom Mag, and 聲韻詩刊 Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine. He is the recipient of a Literary Rector's Award from the University of Santo Tomas and was named the 37th Thomasian Poet and Essayist of the Year.
after Jeremias Elizalde Navarro: pen and ink on paper: 1973: graphite and inkwash on illustration board: 1973
I. The white arrives without warning gripped between two closed fists. The weight between your shoulders is as heavy as a secret heard by a torn ear in the garden. Footmen follow you to town, your spoor of fresh bread calls them like lightning seducing men into mountains. Since you were taken, cosmos closed, grass stayed still like shut doors. Your quiet sends in the people a shudder of blue. The silence of the world ends at the new true of you.
II. An anticipation of dawn comes and falls through the holes on your hands. At the parting of knees, light seeps through, a feather of truth is swallowed in a puddle of tongues. By the countryside, wives play old chords, the no trace of you sends a hurricane of girls to fill pails off lakes. In your coming, sampaguitas bloom, boughs sway like wide curtains. Your liveness stains our cheeks with a streak of burgundy. The chorus of salvation begins with the falseness in me.