Formalin and Weevils

By Alfred Yuson

Our people are told
to eat fish with formalin
and rice with weevils
till the sky breaks
and changes the weather.
Whether that happens
sooner or later doesn’t matter.
We hear jokes anyway
of how beauty entices
force from the loins
of an unwanted begetter.
If those aren’t so funny
then there are serious lies
to slake our thirst for reality.
Figures rise as records
to briefly remember
before they’re broken
like unwilling hymens.
We must fend off birds
to protect the lowly chili
in our gardens until
it turns red, like rage
that leads to prayers
of wishful imprecation.
Coins of the realm
turn as cheap as lives
while the only free pass
is legal fiction, not even
sovereign acts of oblivion.

The Kill List Chronicles

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The new protest literature in the time of Duterte. Because according to Umberto Eco, “To survive, we must tell stories.”