Five Poems From Ayn Frances dela Cruz

Flight

I sit on the MRT
while across me
a man winks and winks
signaling for love.

I look behind
wondering who his eyes sought.
I see nothing but a blur
of wings.

The man must be an angel
in love with angels
and I am caught
in their desperation.

Theirs was a true love story.
I wanted to be the girl
the man waits for
at the end of the station

but when the train stopped
the man got off
jumped from the platform
and boarded another.


Jarred

Inside the jar
the baby maybe thinks
about
being outside

Who knows
maybe its eyes closed
sees more than two
eyes wide open

skin all clammy-
like lizards
fingers and toes
bud-tight

I hate the thought
of flowering
because that would mean
eventual

withering,
Gray on gray
where before there was
whites and pinks

Blooms
Maybe the mother also
thought about it
preferring to keep

her baby perfect
All out there
Never coming though
Bus stops that go

only in one direction.


Beating the Drums

1. In an old house, a young man
in his hands, rough skin beating beneath his palm

2. Picture the man’s hair, long
entwined in his fingers are the tresses he used to love

3. He used to cover his face with his hair
now he covers the drums

4. Music catches the longness of time
he holds it in his hands, finger by finger

5. Every sound is a beat, every beat an echo
he strains to hear long-dead words

6. Skin to skin, he and the drum become one
echo by echo, every movement drums

7. Today, the drum beats as sadly as before
today his heart is a drum.


If these walls could talk

There’s a cat that lives
in my house.
I don’t see it
I only hear
the meows and yelps
that mark its catness.

So much louder,
so imaginatively egotistical
when it sees a mouse.

I search for its cat-eyes,
its cat-paws
its nine lives.

Wanting a taste of fang and claw
of whiskered fur,
sheathed velvet.

Too fast, our times never meet
I am stuck to a wall.
The cat lives
in a maze

forever going in and out
in and out
of my life.

And I a 10-inch nail,
a hair in its path,
will go on loving
behind cracks
from screen to screen
hole to hole

until it looks
and ravishes me.


Fruit

The apple you once wrote of
lies dead on the branch
its smell withered
as your withering arm
which reaches out to pluck
the fruit, yours or mine?

Its skin reveals more moisture
than your lips have known
the tongues that taste
are whorls in which
time’s fingerprints are revealed.

I who write this poem
write of you who eats the fruit
with each bite I trace you
wherever you are
shining.


Ainne “Ayn” Frances dela Cruz, 22, is a lecturer at De La Salle-College of St. Benilde and De La Salle University-Dasmarinas, in the Philippines. She is currently studying for her MA in Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines. She was a fellow for the 7th UST National Writers Workshop for English poetry. Her work has been published in Philippine Graphic, The Literary Apprentice Light, Philippine Panorama, Perlas ng Silangan, The Argotist Online, Paliparan, Nimrod International Journal: Crossing Borders Anthology and The Bathyspheric Review with work forthcoming in Blood Orange Review and Milflores Flash Fiction Anthology. A vegetarian-bum-poet, she spends her free time walking the streets of Cavite.