written by Ricky De Guzman
In the Quezon City art-deco streets I left behind,
I still smell the hint of realism as my flag of coconuts
spitting out a shuffle of dried fish in plastic bags that let me drink in the summer.
Every fly on the wall is a member of the family,
that Sun is a still life in my eyes
two tears in a bucket gather.
On Grant Avenue,
an urban legend told me that shades of red can only be found on mannequins,
and I learned to live and move on, along time ago.
Storefronts are the new puddles of Union Square to splash back from.
These mannequins move like a masterpiece
at the right price, any real artist can look through
oil paintings they’ve never seen
and find a way to buy into a native tongue that folds in on itself.
The doublespeak tossed down a wishing well
surfaced back up into gas station gambling at its finest.
Those thoughts are counting on something,
that made me laugh at myself
in an apartment of 1st generation street food
left overs from the last twenty years of my life.
Born in Manila, raised in Los Angeles, Ricky De Guzman is a graduate student at San Francisco State University. He makes paper airplanes and hopes they can float upside down.
Ramblr Magazine 