Three Poems From Ayn Frances dela Cruz

Highway

At the what I look at

That becomes

The space between strands

Of hair

O the never-ending fungus

Between my toes

Stand clear

I on an island

You on a highway

Roads out

All stars melancholy

As that sweet eyelash

Failing to fall on pupils.

I guess at the distance between stars,

Between Holy Ghosts,

Imagining blackness to be

A blank space

The nothing

That was nothing before

Which is now your heart

Beating

On this far-out space

This interstellar road

That calls all stars

Out with a mere wink,

Forget the bypasses,

I am the hand

That forges fingerprints

That smudges

That never lets go

That never ends

Pyramus and Thisbe

Sweet wall that runs the length of this house, you

Hide my love from me, show me only parts.

One hand at a time, one eye at a time.

How does my kiss translate from my lips to

His, how soft the wall seems sometimes, from wall

To lips, I breathe in moss and moisture in

The space of one breath, one finger at a

Time, I touch those lips, that insipid breath.

One word at a time you whisper a word

One breath at a time you watch me breathing

This wall is your cheek I press mine against

I love the wall with my own fierce loving

Surrender myself to its cold, hard, touch

You, on the other side, look for a door.

Territory

Every inch of skin that belongs to me

Now also belongs to you.

Burning, I, Incense-bearer worship whose God?

With what Heart, with whose hands do we leave nirvana?

How many times must a hand be reborn as air?

Then am I only kissing winds?

Ayn Frances dela Cruz, 23, is a teacher at Mapúa Institute of Technology. This is her third year in the graduate program of Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines. She attended the 7^th University of Santo Tomas National Writers Workshop as a fellow for English poetry. Some of her work has been published in Philippine Graphic, Paliparan, The Argotist Online, The Flask Review, Kritya and previously in Zone.