Metaphors (by Sylvia Plath)

I'm a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf's big with its yeasty rising. Money's new-minted in this fat purse. I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I've eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train there's no getting off.

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Conveyor Belt

For like a conveyor belt I lay before you my present: prosthetically decapitated head; well decorated with crystals; synthetic beads; a barbed wire pierced through the iris. Hungry men before me: I examine, I hear the borborygmus, tingling sensation when my plastic bones crack and break the ceilings. A mirror on the wall where mother used to lean her idealism against. Now rest the rusts, webs of a Black Widow, which is not native to this house: as her now demeanor, as her now demeanor, repeating, reeling and reeling as I sit trying to weave, for my soft dreams have now become plagued long before I dared to sleep my heavy. As a belt: I lay my body as they try to fit the loose holes to fit my thinness. My insides as they churn from a deafening machine audibly discernible so my father could hear, yet faint as his late regrets.

24?

"Twenty-four seems scary," I tell myself. Sometimes, I tell jokes, or mostly, it was conveniently told, like how a laugh returns and introduces itself as villainous friend, but an enemy is the positivity that takes. It is so much scarier when it visits me: a quicksand brought by faux geniuses, a peeking sock-made puppet, I am a whole drama— a ventriloquist of his own dreams. Delighted by my father's cake: "Happy birthday, son!" I still know how to stay still when everybody sings me one. My Mom gave me bills: Money is an angel. Indeed, for it lets me fly out of the reality— out of reality that everything is still made of infinite loops, as in manmade experiments, and how they can be destroyed by one gentle blow.

Pisong Rizal

Kinalakhan ko ang sabi-sabing nasa piso si Rizal upang madaling maabot ang mga tao. Naalala ko at pinakatitigan ang kaláwang ng baryang ito ay ilang taon na ring naglalakbay: pinambayad ng mga alaala; naging kapalítan ng kendi; gamit pangkiskis sa kongkreto; pinang-ukit sa pangako ng pagmamahal sa isang bato. Hanggang sa ipinambato sa fountain na kinalakipan ng pangakong pagmamahal o dalangin ng kagalingan. Ang pagpapahalaga ay humigit sa pisikal na hitsura nitó—umikot-ikot hanggang sa maging panagdag na lámang sa mga okasyon, sa handaang hindi sapat ang limang pirasong perang papel. Pisong Rizal, kawawang káwal ng lipunan; naging limitado sa sukling kung minsan ang pagtanggap ay labag sa kalooban. Kabaligtaran sa mga naniniwalang magsasabing siya ay minsang nanahan sa ilalim ng marmol— nakahimlay nang walang pag-aalinlangan kung paano iikot ang sikulo na kinabukasan ay magmumula sa gatilyo ang kanyang kamatayan. Sapagkat dalawa lamang ang bahagi ng barya: ang tao at ang ibon— isang ta...

Papier-mâché

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