{"id":1070,"date":"2022-12-01T15:33:56","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T07:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/?page_id=1070"},"modified":"2022-12-02T22:26:58","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T14:26:58","slug":"vagabond","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/vagabond\/","title":{"rendered":"Vagabond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vagabond<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Poem]<\/em><\/p>\n

Isa X Prince<\/em><\/p>\n

I lived in a house
\non a hill in the middle of the city
\nwith a gray facade no one ever notices.
\nWorn out posters held the walls together
\nof sweet tongued men whose invocation
\nof their line to the Prophet takes place
\nonly once every three Ramadans.<\/p>\n

A photograph hanged on the wall separating
\nthe kitchen from the bedroom:<\/p>\n

a young boy and his mother
\nstanding on the edge of PC Hill against a bougainvillea
\npreventing them from slipping down the highway
\nthat divides the ancient rock and the ravine of Dapdap.<\/p>\n

I counted the days making friends of passersby
\nand ice cream vendors who gave momentary relief,
\nthe sticky sweetness quickly disappearing in the midday sun
\nleaving only a cone of emptiness.<\/p>\n

And when night fell
\nreturning like barn swallows to their nest
\nmother and I sat on a rickety bench
\ntwo bodies bearing the same solitude.
\nNo words were spoken of our scars
\nand the burden of centuries.<\/p>\n

When the appointed time came
\nwe migrated to yet another city
\nleaving only a trail of dusty lines and cobwebs from
\nwhere a scotch tape once held our photograph.
\nThere were no histories to be left behind.<\/p>\n

She would say: Do not be plagued by
\nthe weight of memory. Don’t look back.
\nEverything should fit in the palm of your hand
\nlike the old, dependable iPhone 3 in her pocket
\nthat captured time that was afforded to us.<\/p>\n

\n

[box]<\/p>\n

Isa X Prince is a 22-year-old aspiring writer who was\u00a0raised in many cities around the Philippines by a single mother, a Christian woman of Negrense-Manobo-Spanish roots, who sold chorizo, longganisa,\u00a0bulad<\/i>, life insurance, knockoff antiques and vintage items, and encyclopedias. She showered him with books and told him tales of Maria Labo,\u00a0aswang<\/i> and the macabre at night to divert his attention whenever he asked about his father, a Maguindanaon, whom she met only once in a bar during her college years.<\/p>\n

[\/box]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vagabond [Poem] Isa X Prince I lived in a house on a hill in the middle of the city with a gray facade no one ever notices. Worn out posters held the walls together of sweet tongued men whose invocation … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1070","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1070"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1109,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1070\/revisions\/1109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}