Born to the drown
of the mountain (to the

teeth of upper fish)

where four wrists exhibit
no remarkable

signs of grasping each to
each, no movie gloss

of eyes meeting, no end
credit glazing other

than lividity, that ooze

the edges of the flat
immovable rocks
a tug invisible
under a wet air, a

swirl whispering at
once about two solitaries

knotted black

in the blue
of borrowed shirts.

“External Markings” works with two recent UPLB deaths (Kevin Lagadon and Mark Lorenz Valdez) whose bodies were retrieved from a natural pool in Mt Makiling (The Flat Rocks). After autopsy, the authorities ruled these as deaths by drowning. But our world here has been so used to crime that some of us can’t readily accept accident as the only explanation.