Shiny and New Offering and Other Poems

By Karlo Sevilla

Shiny and New Offering

Government opens the expressway
to the long-suffering public
weary of traffic.

Its silver sheen metallic,
flanked by divine green.
A papal ferula lain across
bustling cities and sleepy towns.
The entire scenery of soft sunlight,
baptismal – united in spirit
with the landscape of Jordan River
two millenniums ago.

This shall be a 100km/hr pilgrimage
of repentance and hope.
Each tollbooth a guarded
Station of the Cross. 

Afternoon, Afternoon, Afternoon

The sea is a wide net, catches sunlight,
disperses the yellow tourmalines
all over her blue, and her waves
carry the ghostly harvest to shore.

Afternoon, afternoon, afternoon,
then the swallowing dusk
with a flight of swallows
knifing her orange-purple sky.

Afternoon, afternoon, afternoon,
then the night and her blackness
singed by the slow burn
of the sauntering moon.

Mad Mom

I knew I was gonna get it:
I was supposed to stay home
to review for my exams the day after,
but she let me out on parole
to play tag with my friends for an hour;
it took me three hours. 

When I finally went home,
there was mother waiting for me:
standing with knuckles on her waist;
amphora anchored at the doorway.

Karlo Sevilla of Quezon City, Philippines is the author of the poetry collections “Metro Manila Mammal” (Soma Publishing, 2018) and “Outsourced! . . .” (Revolt Magazine, 2021). Thrice nominated for the Best of the Net, his poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Small Orange, The Sparrow’s Trombone, Eclectica, and elsewhere.