QUINCE magazine
a literary and visual arts journal
Under Torrential Rain
Soaked and wading across
waist-high flood that fills
the city street,
your still-intact grey umbrella
accepts that it has failed you.
It wonders if you hold it
high above your head
as a white flag
or as still-defiant sword
in a lost battle.
In muteness it proposes
that you just turn it upside-down
and ride it as a boat instead.
The Alley Kitten
Tonight, the little black one
of black and white fur
mews and wanders
the empty street again,
scavenges for food
amongst the garbage
inside and around the bin,
then goes ahead
and walks off,
lost as a broken heart.
Then – oh! – it runs
to meet its mother,
they lick each other’s faces,
then side by side
vanish into the night.
(Anyway, what do I know
of kittens?)
Walking Along the Alley, at Night
Your long shadow
precedes you,
dwarfs you,
cuts through
the narrow street
as a lance,
as battering ram,
as throng of exiles
in flight,
for whom a sea
parts for a moment.
QUINCE magazine
Karlo Sevilla, from Quezon City, Philippines, is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Metro Manila Mammal (Soma Publishing, 2018), and the chapbook, You (Origami Poems Project, 2017). Twice nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology, his poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Small Orange, Thimble, Literary Yard, among others.