Mice
The poet of beauty
sees mice at the table
so white, and frail,
red-eyed, glowing
how frequently through
opium eyes, I see
only what is on the other
side of me. That wall,
so dark and dank and
locked with moats, only
mice can get through.
What wall, what mice
What eyes gets through to you?
The Bone Narratives
On a cycle, a seeming hunch
10,000 bones are gathered
For one supreme tent, the skin
Holds beneath its folds.
A socket, a mandible, the jaw,
A hinge, completely spread
Seems like the revolutions
Of the sun on a fallen earth.
These are my pulp fictions,
My recurring history
Of histories, write it all
Down on these old bones,
There time calcifies, and I
Even as they become solidified
Wax, taming the always unseen
Deserts, only the heart
Is unpredictable, the bones go
On, recording the skin, becoming
A book of blood, a space, where
The old ghost writers rehearse
Their ectopic narratives.
In our ivory towers, in our sparse
Comfort rooms, the bones arch
And bend, and we plant them
In our gardens of time, waiting
For them, for us to bloom,
Those beautiful, deadly
Night-flowers, the flowering
Bones, the ones that rattle and
Shake their fists at passers-by.
Ainne “Ayn” Frances dela Cruz is a Filipino writer and editor, currently working as an ESL teacher in Uzbekistan. She has a Masters in International Art and Culture Management from Rome Business School, where her startup Paper Monster Press was longlisted for the #RBS4Entrepreneurship Prize. A fellow of the 7th UST National Writers Workshop and the Montaggio Writers Workshop, her work has been published in local and international magazines and anthologies. Her micro chapbook Tumbleweed, was published by Tiny Press and two of her poetry chapbooks are forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press and Origami Press (USA) in 2025. https://linktr.ee/Ayn_frances
