At the Barrio Cemetery

Official Selection, Poetry in English, 15th Iligan National Writers Workshop sponsored by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), May 26-30, 2008.

The men are digging up my father’s grave.

My folks decided to join Father’s and Mother’s remains

in one resting place. It’d be best for all of us, they said.

All the gravediggers find are scattered bones,

a clump of hair and tattered pieces of cloth.

The men sighed relief, perhaps from exhaustion,

except me, now wondering how poor

Father and Mother really were

at the sight of such nothing-ness.




























*To Manuel Cepe Manaog [1943-1978]