est. 2022
ISSUE 2: ADAGIO
issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii
SOPHIE DELA CRUZ
issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii issue ii
Agilang Mata
Sophie dela Cruz | poetry
isa.
(Bakit ganyan ang mukha mo?
You look more like your nanay
than your tatay. Tiny nose. Tiny
eyes. Maybe that’s
good. That means you’ll be
guapo. Talagang ma pogi. Your
mother’s side had all
the supermodels. If only
she was so pretty. If only you’ll
grow so tall.)
dalawa.
My grandma likes to ask if I’m hungry
before she brings me a ceramic bowl
of fruits, each pear and kiwi and
lychee and apple cut into little
bite-sized cubes, regardless
of whether my answer was
in the affirmative
or not.
Once, in her less lucid
moments, she brought me
a bowl of fruit garnished
with a single silver
strand of her
hair.
tatlo.
She tells me that it’s better on
the motherland; it’s a
shame that I
have never
been.
When she calls me her own flesh
and blood instead of Apong
Lalaki, and when she
remembers the
red-gold
inscriptions of
tricycles and cars instead of
our grocery lists, she sees the
sunrise as it shines in
Tiger City.
apat.
(Bastos. Tumigil
ka. You think too
much; that is your
greatest fault, besides your
hair—your eyes—your
perfect face. Anak,
what will you do when I
am gone? Oh, God! What
will you do when I
am gone?)
lima.
I hang up posters of
an incumbent boxer, a
topographic map, and the
queen of the world
on the slanted
slabs of drywall between
the ceiling and the floor.
My grandma
makes sure that
each laminated paper
finds its place.
(Ay nako! Push the corner
more to the left! If you
stand where I’m
standing, then
you’ll see
what I
see.)
The mounting putty peels
off the striations on the paint.
It is morning.
Magandang umaga.
I Envision Tuesday
Sophie dela Cruz | poetry
A (somewhat) biblical Angel—the whole nine
yards: one
of those Mike, Azrael, or Shinigami types with
saturnine, primal
faces polished bronze like horseshoes’ brass or
plated tongues
that match each voice on Earth or the equine escorts
with which
I cross the great marsh of Postmortem Truth—visits
me when
the full-bodied midnight falls asleep, the knowledge of
love and
lack having been entrenched between the sulci of my
dual souls.
It did not
speak (demons
rarely do), but I
imagine it would
have told me
this:
“You will never learn. As you grow, you will bring the
same spirits with you: the same shape crosses each
threshold and overturns each knob or door. Life-
shattering morsels become minutes and harrowing
seconds change to hours in your mind. It’s all
relative. You’ll remember what it’s like to draw
shapes in pen on your best friend’s arm; you won’t
recall your first kiss. You’ll picture the way that the
sunset looks from the bell tower out your window; you
will never see the rightward push of ancient enmity
again. Is that why you are the way you are?
Who pities the bold? Who comforts the sullied?
Give yourself the love that you extend. I don’t want to
leave you, but you have already forgotten
who I am.
“To think that you could stay as you were before the
flame-lit night
turned the sandy shore into glass (and marble) —
before whispering
smoke became incense (and joss) at a touch —
before you
could tell me how swallows’ wings differ from the
feathers of
the sparrows! Here we remain, fazed by the (ever-encroaching)
moon. You
will be beautiful. When the clock loses its face, you will be the
last to
leave. Don’t be afraid.”
There
it is.
As the day rises, the dunes fall, and the fallout crumbles
into dust or sonder, I look up at the ceiling. The
(somehow) biblical angel stares back at me.
Eight pupils distort
my image. Twelve wings
block out the sun. One
hand reaches out (or
perhaps it refrained) to
touch a weeping
face.
Sophie Ligaya dela Cruz is a queer, Asian-American, non-binary biology student attending the University of California, Berkeley. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Ethel, Neologism Poetry Journal, Across the Margin, Polyphony Lit, and elsewhere. They are also a staff writer at Cut Fruit Collective. When they’re not scribbling, they are often found studying frog aposematism or panicking over K-dramas.