Amadeo Mendoza
Nudes
I tell you, this night is nude.
Christmas lights fiery in the brazen boulevard.
Malfunction me, Marie. The red
of this cigar creates a cusp
of an action, distraction. Mauve
maudlin bar statues a moll
down south of the east wing
of a northern Manila mall. Suction
these tropes and soap-opera
voice, truant as a pencil
of a ten-year old taken
by a hobo buying amoxicillin
in Pedro Gil.
I tell you, this night is.
-from his book, February Rain
White Butterfly
Flutters by small trees, daisies, ruffles of a lady in a wedding dress.
In Gaza, it might be the last drifting cloud the bombed children see
before their last see-saw ride.
In Ukraine, it might be a snowflake in a mahogany twilight before an execution, so cold, so furiously cold.
On the streets of Manila, it might be an insignia in a policeman’s uniform as a poor boy is shot.
“Dear Butterfly, I know you are so soulful in your flutter, but why are you perched on a uniform?
Or is that gray grass?”
“Are you also of this earth with its formal and dying gardens?”
-from his book, February Rain
Black Bird
Stately it perches. On dry branches. Or even when it flies.
The only one. Beauty
is no longer in the eye of the beholder's
vexed views.
The most beautiful creature
in the dark. Dark within the most defiant dark, like a sinner
entering the dark confession box
to scatter his darkest black.
Black birds matter.
I want to dream of them. Often.
I want them smiling their far-flung furthest
when I'm dreaming about sexy
but now dead girls, dead girls on now dead parties, their mothers
also dead because they decided no child should go ahead of them.
That matters. And they never fly
away.
-from his book, February Rain
Amadeo Mendoza’s poems have been published in almost all literary journals in the Philippines, and a poem of his has been published in Gargoyle Magazine. He is the author of February Rain (Balangay Books).