March, the month that keeps on giving

The anticipation when I wake up and check my emails is something I look forward to. I feel like a broken record saying this often. But it's the truth. It's genuinely exciting to scroll through my inbox in hopes of finding an email specifically addressed to me. Sometimes, when I get lucky, a notification appears first and it has the words 'poetry' or 'submission' on it. Screw caffeine, that's what gets me going!

Thank you to Seasonal Fruits Lit Mag for accepting not one, not two, but three of my works for their issue that came out on March 21. I'm truly honored to have been a part of the spring equinox issue. I'm really grateful too because the poems they submitted are probably the ones that I really had to take the time and reflect on.

My poem summer is, if you have not guessed it already, about summer, but not because I love it, but because I absolutely dislike it. I channeled my hatred for the heat and the flies into this piece. I had to make up new imagery to truly digest how much I hated how hot it gets in New Zealand.

But summer is not all bad. My other piece to the grass flower is about how the flowers in summer are beautiful. I wanted to focus on the grass flower itself, because no one cares to stop and look at the grass flower. I've written it in a way that seeks to also amplify her beauty (which can be a metaphor that people can relate to because we all suffer from doses of self-doubt).

And finally, my tanka: quiet is the night is a two-part reflection on what it's like to fall asleep at night in summer. After a warm day, it's always nice to end it with a nice cool breeze, and that's a picture I tried to paint in this poem. It's serene, it's somber, it's quiet - just how I love my nights.

Thank you also to Evanescent Magazine for accepting my work for their debut issue themed 'interlude'. They've accepted my poems how to take a photograph, a childhood in memory, and a date, impromptu. Each of these poems actually have a piece of memory imbued in them.

how to take a photograph is definitely a memory of my family trying to take a photo. As someone who comes from a large family (both biological and chosen), it gets quite hectic when it comes to getting people into a small space for a photograph - but in the end, it's very meaningful.

a childhood in memory is a specific memory, one that I had made in the Philippines. I tried to distill the memory into its bare essence to give it a sense of incompleteness to try and capture the substance of a memory.

And, of course, a date, impromptu is a very meaningful poem to me because it is about a great time I had with this girl who I walked to Britomart with. Quite literally, most of the events are written in chronological order in the poem.

Thank you again to Seasonal Fruits Lit Mag and to Evanescent Magazine for accepting my works! Check out my updated works here.