The Starbeck Orion Issue #1 24 of 25

A Feast Of Words And Image

Karlo Sevilla

Dis(re)membering
 
A ghostly flower that blooms and withers
again and again in a vicious cycle.
Or perhaps just a blot that blinks colors,
and each tiny burst strains to brightness
then opaques again, to equal those
revealed then concealed years ago.
Everything fragments along
with the broken hymns
and stuttered utterances,
attempts to be as strident or as soft
as what those discarded moments really were.
 
But all in vain.
 
Blurred and ephemeral.
Just a fleeting and blunt visitation.
Many times a dull intruder, barely visible.
 
What is complete and constant is this heavy smog:
 
It lingers, encumbers, and drags.
Punctuated, highlighted, by the recidivist thief
who intermittently gives, always curses, then leaves
 
with a piece.

The Soldiers of Winter
 
Wounded, I stumble into the forest clearing.
The wolves circle in, the warmth
of their quickened breaths
duels against the cold.
Fresh blood from the last kill
drips down metal snouts.
Paws clad in black leather
leave crimson dots
all over the blanket of snow,
a scattering of poinsettia petals
across immaculate white.
Finally, in disregard of my surrender,
they wrap it around me.
Sullied and bloodied,
my white flag.

 
  A Falling Man

I dangle on your promise.
A dagger’s blade
I clench with both hands.
I refuse the other hands
that reach out.
 
The surface of the spring
below, how placid
and pristine
it was. 

Karlo Sevilla (he/him)

of Quezon City, Philippines is the author of five poetry collections, including the full-length “Metro Manila Mammal” (Soma Publishing, 2018) and the chapbook “Recumbent” (8Letters Bookstore and Publishing, 2023). Shortlisted for the 2021 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition and thrice nominated for the Best of the Net, his poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Philippines Free Press, The Wombwell Rainbow, Black Bough Poetry, The Wise Owl, and others. He is a 2024 International Fellow of the International Human Rights Arts Movement (IHRAM) for poetry.