Malate Stirs

Joseph Eli Occeño

Malate stirs. Another damp day. The abruptness of the cold weather, unfamiliar to the foreign visitors, was not a surprise to the Manilans. The tropical temperament of their country spelled only two seasons: a wet one and a dry one. The typhoon months were not particularly cold but late October would start to call on amihan winds to temper the otherwise unbearably humid spell. Malate then breathes a sigh of northeastern spirits.

The convenience stores are the earliest risers, their night custodians replaced by fresh-faced diurnals, their hobo residents expelled to another daily exodus. Students begin to trickle out of cheap apartment buildings and various cast iron dwellings into the wideness of Taft Avenue to wait for jeepneys. They are already pressed for time and are not picky with the size and quality of these American relics. Overhead, the Light Rail Transit roars, its metal belly already filled with uniforms, baskets, suitcases, and perverts. Amidst the rustic honks and booms, tepid conversations can be heard among the hopeful provincial workers lining up health clinics, travel agencies and bakeries. Loiterers and bystanders, the lifeblood of this city, had already set up their stalls and chairs. Their perfume - cigarette smoke, enveloping whole buildings and entire streets.

Midday. The chuper (a corruption of the English chauffer) performs his dual job of barking jeepney routes and opening 7-Eleven doors with an accommodating demeanor. Jeepney drivers either take their lunch on the road or disappear who knows where to eat. Nurses from the nearby hospital go in batches.

The computer shops are filled with absentee students, vagrants, and professional gamers: a hot pot of sweat, cheap air fresheners, and spicy Luck Me pancit canton boils. Some washing lady throws a planggana of water into the road along Remedios. It drains into the barely noticeable canals adjoined to the pavement where gangs of cats and dogs chew on garbage-treasures and human bones. The sun nears its peak, yet the rainy forecast of clouds provides a chilled atmosphere. Those who are learned in the ways of the weather (a culture thing) fears of heavy rain come nightfall for Malate has a strange propensity to sink into the deluge - as if determined to return to the swamp it had originally been before Spanish urban planning and American plumbing came along.

As the sun sets and dark clouds become one with the cover of gradual night, scattered lights conjure up from darkness and homegoers fight for seats in cramped vehicles (never mind the space so long as it got them home early). A light drizzle pervades. Time turns sluggish as the chair- sitters toil in cubicles and the working class keep us alive until it is finally night, and the cumulonimbus defies all expectations when it stops to loiter just overhead but – the writer notes, seem awaiting a signal for a crescendo. The nocturnals, themselves accustomed to the bacchantic and the bohemian, plan their raids and routes as they contemplate the weather. These are the bar hoppers and rich kids of the bourgeoisie and the investigative journalists, prostitutes, and wanderers of the folk-masses. The night is forever young while waiting for the sudden and final dawn –another day then starts... or continues from where it has left off, whichever you prefer.

The manufacturing quality of Malate meant it did not sleep nor wake but rotates a roulette of day- crawlers and night-dwellers who are, I think, the real possessors of charm – these underpaid and overworked detainees of industrial lifestyle.

Woman In The Middle

James Cloyd Vercede

Vince Agcaoili was born in Quezon City and raised in Antipolo City. He was a fellow of the first iteration of Tara, Tula Workshop in 2020, the UST National Writers Workshop 2021, the Spring 2021 fellowship of Albertus Magnus Institute (Sacramento, USA), and the IYAS National Writers Workshop 2022. His works have appeared in Road Map Series Heritage, UA&P’s The Bosun, Novice Magazine, Ilahas Literary Journal, Luna Journal: A Semi-Annual Journal of New Filipino Writing, Audience Askew and are forthcoming in UST’s Tomas. He is currently at work on his first book of poems. He teaches literature at the University of Asia and the Pacific, and he sings and plays the guitar for the indie rock band Eskinita. You can reach him at vinceraphael.agcaoili@gmail.com.

Judiel Alcober from Palo, Leyte, is a collage artist. He is new to the literary platform and uses themes that are relevant to day-today life events. His hobbies are hugging his teddy bear every night, waking up at 4 am, and playing offline google dino run.

Rosebud Ben-Oni is the author of several collections of poetry, including If This Is the Age We End Discovery (March 2021), which won the Alice James Award and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. She has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, City Artists Corps, CantoMundo and Queens Council on the Arts. Her work appears in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, Guernica, Electric Literature, among others. Her poem "Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark" was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in NYC.

Contributors

In May 2022, Paramount commissioned her video essay “My Judaism is a Wild Unplace" for a campaign for Jewish Heritage Month, which appeared on Paramount Network, MTV Networks, The Smithsonian Channel, VH1 and many others. In 2023, she received a Café Royal Cultural Foundation grant to write The Atomic Sonnets, a full-length poetry collection based on her chapbook 20 Atomic Sonnets (Black Warrior Review, 2020), which she began in honor of the Periodic Table’s 150th Birthday in 2019. In January 2023, she performed at Carnegie Hall on International Holocaust Memorial Day, as part “We Are Here: Songs From The Holocaust.”

Dustine Rene Bernasor lives in Cebu City with his cat Melo. He works for a youth organization and is a graduate of Computer Science from UP-Cebu. One of his poems has been featured in PXRN, a chapbook by The Stray Poets Collective, which he is a part of. In his spare time, he journals, goes on photowalks or tends his plants.

Robin Christian M. Cabial resides in Pandacan, Manila and works as an HVAC designer for an overseas company. A graduate of UP Diliman with a bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture, Robin has also worked with UP wild for a coloring book that focused on the natural flora and fauna that thrives within the Diliman community. And when everything else is put on hold, Robin finds happiness in reading books, playing online games and singing to pass time with his family and friends.

Julius Clar was born in Surigao del Sur; attained a journalism degree at a university in Manila; and currently resides in Quezon City. His creative work have been shown at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Ayala Museum, the Lopez Museum and the Silverlens Gallery, among other venues. His collage pieces formed part of a zine project which illustrated the poetry of National Artist Cirilo Bautista, produced by De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde. His digital photographs were published by the Santelmo literary quarterly last year.

John Paul David is an emerging artist based in Bataan. He predominantly works with graphite and is currently working as a full-time artist/illustrator. He attended a portrait workshop in 2013 and was eventually hired as a portrait artist at the age of 16, before becoming more interested in idealistic representational art, which now occupies his creative focus.

Ridge Ross De Veyra is a corporate slave by day and a street photographer by night. On some inspired evenings, he spins words into stanzas. Some of his literary works have been published in Novice Magazine while one of his photographs have become part of an exhibit by Fotomoto PH. He is currently residing in Makati where he spends most nights photographing the sleepless lights of the city.

Charles Gan is a 2nd year biology major living in the one of the historical hotspots of Negros Island, Silay city. His work has previously been featured in Sidak. If he's not photographing his neighborhood streets during his free time, he is probably playing chess or tending to his house plants.

Contributors

Eric LM Hansen lives in Victoria, Canada. Between 2021 and 2023 he was awarded a mentorship with Arc Magazine’s poet-inresidence for Canada (Yvonne Blomer former poet laureate Victoria BC); Eric was invited to read his poems at Planet Earth Poetry; and, CD Baby published the album Trip Doctor by Sheepskin Sound Reduction, featuring his poetry as lyrics, distributed by music streaming services such as Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. He enjoys the sea in his hair, birds in the forest, yoga upside down, and cooking at home.

Matt Hohner (MFA, Naropa University, 1997) has won or placed in numerous national and international poetry competitions, including being shortlisted and commended for the Moth Prize and wins in the Doolin International Poetry Prize in Ireland and the Oberon Magazine Poetry Prize. Hohner has held two residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and has one forthcoming at Anam Cara Writer’s and Artist’s Retreat in Ireland. His work have been featured in Rattle: Poets Respond, Sky Island Journal, Takahē, The Storms Journal, New Contrast, Live Canon, The Cardiff Review, and Prairie Schooner. An editor with Loch Raven Review, Hohner’s first collection Thresholds and Other Poems (Apprentice House) was published in 2018. A full- time writer, Hohner lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. Recently his work has appeared in CROW NAME, WORDPEACE and DuckuckMongoose.

Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum - The Chroma Museum (weebly.com)

Hailing from Roxas City, Joseph Eli Occeño is currently taking up his Bachelor in Culture and Arts Education in the Philippine Normal University. He has participated in multiple art exhibits by ArtShow Philippines and his plays have been recognized by the Gawad Severino Montano. As a writer, he holds in high regard Marquez, Joaquin and pamphlets from NDMOs as his primary inspirations. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Torch Publications where he offers most of his writings and artworks in regular issues, magazines and other anthologies.

Bryan G. Salazar is a long-time resident of Cebu City, and has a degree in Mathematics from the University of the Philippines in Cebu. He has two self-published books under my name: "People in Dark Places," a collection of short stories, and a short novel titled "The Dying."

Jan San Juan currently resides in Marilao, Bulacan and, works as a barista and as a freelance visual artist. He studied computer programming at Notre Dame of Greater Manila in 2010 but dropped out to pursue art and coffee making. He has published two zines; one published by a library titled "the journey of what it needs to be," the other one is a self-published zine titled "AUGURA." His recent works are on view and available on going exhibitions in Malolos and Makati.

Joaquin Soliven is a writer from Manila. Some of his favorite writers are Wallace Stevens, Paige Lewis, Hera Lindsay Bird, Olivia Gatwood, T.H White, Kim Addonizio, Hart Crane and Gerard Manley Hopkins (but he really just reads Moby Dick on repeat.) He enjoys making lists.

James Cloyd Vercede currently resides in Cebu City. He works as a Technical Writer for Blueberry Digital Labs Philippines, though he acquired a Bachelor’s Degree in Aircraft Maintenance Technology. Apart from photography, his hobbies include playing football, playing video games, and riding to various places on his motorcycle.

Xavier Lorenzo Victoriano currently resides in Manila and is a proud graduate of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde with a degree in Export Management. Photography has always been a realm that has deeply resonated with him; about a year ago, he decided to take a chance in taking photography more seriously and has been immensely blessed to have been featured in an Italy-based photographer’s magazine “Forgotten Films."