Manila teeth, sticky skin

powerlines all tangled and dense

the sun hangs low behind Buendia billboards

all tattered from past typhoons that are named like Saints

basketball jerseys and shorts, beehived bleached shirt

too big for her but her smile mirrors the Mickey embossed

all the while flip-flops slap against pavement and against feet too small

snaps firecrackers during New Year’s and cracks Quezon City gunshots as the night nears

moro, jack en poy, squeezed on a sidewalk next to narrow roads holding jeeps that held

prisoners of war, running on the gallons of blood we’ve forgotten, hidden underneath pillows, now soaked up by the mattress, dried by a dusty fan whose neck is broken with its swivel seized as the blade cuts wildly at nothing for someone sewn to the straws, eyes burning a thousand yard stare into its eyelids