by Efren Oserin Jr.
on Hibiscus leaves
teared heavy drops at high notes.
Rainy season, humming tounge,
both cried lullabies
under after-twilight sky.
Rainy season, loud laughter
inside bricked houses,
while strays prayed to stop the rain.
Rainy season in highlands,
wind whipped a cursed spell
nipa shelters danced like drunks.
Rainy season, rhyming words,
replies were dead cold
from the voice spilled by the phone.
Rainy season, runny nose
fevered, flavored cold,
coughed after the final laugh.
Rainy season with raincoat
clasped this frail body
made of ice of lies, frozen.
Rainy season on this bridge,
footsteps were buried,
only remembered, heartprints.
Efren Oserin Jr.: There’s something in the rain. It’s not just a part of water cycle but it is a reflection of how individuals conquer their lives. The tendency when rain comes: umbrellas become shelter, roofs turn into protection, others run in different paces but have the same goal—to escape and hide—and children see this as time to play. “It Rains, I Write Ukiah” attempts to explain what is behind the curtain of droplets, what is the social, political and psychological truth in rain showers and how do people stand still in cold and floods of being alive through the use of a 7-7-7 structure poem. It proves that binaries are everywhere, that they exist even when rain comes light or heavy. There are tales of aesthetics, a sense of survival, suffocating sadness, eye-opening horror and frozen memories. No one can tell everything but the rain knows exactly the perspective of contemporary realities.
Published: Thursday 9 September 2021[RETURN TO AUDITORY CORTEX 2021]
Born and raised in an upland barangay in Guinobatan, Albay, Philippines, Efren Oserin Jr. is a 21-year-old emerging poet and writer. Some of his works have been published in 7 Eyes Productions, OPC’s Balintuna (short story anthology), Lakbay (poem anthology) and Katastropiya (flash fiction anthology) and in TBC Publications’ Rainbow (short story anthology). He is currently finishing his BA in Literature at Bicol University College of Arts and Letters.