Posted in Words for Melissa on Aug 30th, 2009
By Alexander Martin Remollino You thanked me for lending an ear to your story, which you have said you will not tire of telling. I can listen to your story a thousand times or even for a thousand years, because it is one of those stories that really matter in an age when stories are […]
Posted in Words for Melissa on Aug 23rd, 2009
From Kundiman On May 19, 2009, Melissa Roxas, 31, an activist and Kundiman fellow from Los Angeles who had been doing volunteer health work in Tarlac Province in the Philippines, was kidnapped along with two other health volunteers for a nongovernmental nationalist group called Bayan. Let us participate in a community of cymbals through poems– […]
Posted in Melissa's Words on Aug 21st, 2009
Humus by Melissa Roxas I. The composition of earth changes every time something is mixed into it. The rains come and it becomes mud when mixed with water. Seeds, when planted, flower into something that feeds you. The same is true of smell and sounds. Isn’t it often said that when you talk to plants […]
Posted in Melissa's Words on Aug 7th, 2009
Disinter by Melissa Roxas Her red shorts were left in an abandoned shack a rag on the rotting wood floor the heavy screen door, shut the echo of her voice a scrap between the cracks… found a fingernail. It was said two women and a man were spotted somewhere along that road in a solitary […]
Posted in Melissa's Words on Aug 2nd, 2009
[This poem was conceived and memorized by Melissa during her abduction.] Come before the Night Hour Come and Sing before Night Comes. I am Flame to the Body. The Incipient Wing that can’t Fly. The Open Skin on a Foot that Bleeds Black. Tonight I will learn to Die a Thousand Times and Be Resurrected.