Congratulations to the winners of Meritage Press's Second Annual Holiday Contest! The 2002 contest was judged by creative writing teacher and award-winning poet Oliver de la Paz (author of Names Above Houses , Southern Illinois Press). Oliver judged the poems without knowing their authors, which is to say all poems were judged on their own merits (and note how the winners are generally “emerging” poets whose entries bested those submitted by many more established poets). The winners are as follows:

TIED FOR FIRST PLACE:
"Fireworks in the Rain" by Naya S. Valdellon
"Is This Your Train?" by Michella Rivera-Gravage

THIRD PLACE: "State of Emergency" by Barbara Jane Reyes

FOURTH PLACE: "Inheritance: a Sestina" by Jennifer Mangantulao Macagba

FIFTH PLACE: “In Absentia” by Sid Gomez Hildawa

Here are the poems:

FIREWORKS IN THE RAIN
By Nava S. Valdellon

When the others get up and leave
a line of empty cups like ellipses
on the table, we hesitate to end
our sentences, or let this flow
of words trickle down to one

final drop. At Cafe Memento,
it's never the last day. You take
your time here, another cigarette,
and ask me about him--initial
letter of my ancient alphabet

starting with a capital A. Smoke
swirls in the shape of questions
you haven't begun to ask. Let me
share this keepsake of a moment
with you: the first time he drove

me home, the September sky
showered rain-commas. I wasn't
even seventeen then, nor versed
in the syntax of strokes and sighs.
His car had just slowed down

on my street, when the burning
bursts of punctuation appeared--
yellow dashes, fountains of slashes,
asterisks, apostrophes. He paused
mid-phrase--what else could we do

but watch the sparks of language
smolder into place? The scene
seems contrived, but we brewed
enough explanations, as we did
for love. It was a festival's opening

event, he guessed, or a celebrity's
birthday present. While I pictured
a man with parentheses for ears,
lighting fireworks from that past
New Year in the rain. Why do we

concoct such stories--to find out
why we start in the first place?
I finish my coffee, as you stare
intently at an ashtray overflowing
with endings. Memento is closing

along with the day, so let this be
our souvenir question: tonight,
do the stars glow like periods,
or embers of exclamation points
blazing, blessing us to begin?

***

IS THIS YOUR TRAIN?
by Michella Rivera-Gravage

Press together by concrete and tweed, two commuters are waiting for a train. Thighs become acquainted, practically inappropriate friction under the guise of crowds and rush hour. We both abide by the quiet denial of each other's presence. The mechanical breeze from the swish of the doors pushes back our hair. It is the way the fluorescent lights in the tunnel cut your face in rapid succession as the train barrels forward that signals you to me. There is a smooth break in the air and I slip out. When I was a little boy I had a profound understanding of the world. Scared of what I could not see, I knew that which I cannot touch would kill me. I quickly learned to funnel my extraordinarily everything. Bit to bolt and tumbler, I tucked the dangerous vigor of my color neatly away and longed for Hollywood pallor. I originated from pulsating neon. Pushing my lips, I worked my mouth around the theatre marquee. “Pussycat. Pussycat.” As a child, I would say it over and over again until I felt the curves of the smooth light sliding outward from my mouth. I am speaking low so that you will lean in to hear me. I gently fill my nostrils with the skin of your cheek, do you always choose this train? I confess, my mother once referred to me as a cross between a tawdry princess draped in tulle and a fragmented reflection of a satirical comedy about racist lust. Subway cars are like confessional booths. We remain anonymous side by side looking languidly forward, rocking with the movement of the train. I trust you. I slide off my sweat-soaked trendy panties made of one hundred percent cotton and place them on your lap. These will be used for the DNA tests. A thousand years from now they will want to know who rode these trains. They will reconstruct this very moment, sculpting us with made up gestures and expressions. The historians will get the outfits right but the anthropologists will miss the verve.

***

STATE OF EMERGENCY
By Barbara Jane Reyes

To honor movement in crescendos of text, combing through ashes for fragments of human bone, studying maps drawn for the absurdity of navigation — what may be so edgy about this state of emergency is my lack of apology for what I am bound to do. For instance, if I dream the wetness of your mouth an oyster my tongue searches for the taste of ocean, if I crave the secret corners of your city on another continent, in another time, in series of circular coils extending outward, then it is only because I continue to harbor the swirls of galaxies in the musculature and viscera of my body. You will appear because I have mouthed your name in half-wish, reluctant to bring myself to you. You will appear for me, because you always do, with earthen skin outside the possibility of human causation.

***

INHERITANCE: A SESTINA
by Jennifer Mangantulao Macagba

Mother, there is a country
where I inherited the moon's face
and sunken nose that cradle tears
of unspoken words.
There, you loved the caribou yawns
and the ocean's murmur of distance.

But you followed the awe of distance,
riding away from a brown country,
on the waves of ocean's yawn.
Placing faith in the memory of faces,
you wrote letters and only the words
bowed to your family's tears.

When I was small, your silent tears
condemned the distance
but I had to ask: "Speak the words
of a dream country."
"Trace my face with your face
until I begin to yawn."

In my dreams, I visited the red morning yawns
claiming my inheritance of fiercely hidden tears
and an ever-smiling face.
And from my window, I saw in the distance
of dawn, the gentle stirring of a country
and I spoke a language I knew no words.

For I have inherited recovery's words,
mouthing over and over the dying day's yawn.
I have inherited dirty knees of squatting country
men and market women tears
who see Mother Mary in the distance.
I have inherited the sun on my face.

One day I will own the lines on your face,
a sketched apology no word
could capture. One day the distance
between mother and daughter, the yawns
of fatigue will be my burden. One day, your tears
will mark my way back to a country.

Inang Bayan, I will come to write the island luha
and cigarette hikab, embracing the cold distance,
madly tracing the impression of my mother's face with my words.

***

IN ABSENTIA
By Sid Gomez Hildawa

The sadness within these walls is the quiet
sadness of space itself; invisible, inescapable.
And hollow, like a forgotten well I'd like to fill up
with flood waters, lava, or quick-drying cement.
Departures are never as swift as the flick of a light
switch, or as definitive as the collapse into dust
cloud and rubble of a tall building under engineered
blasts of planted dynamite. You walk out in particles,

leaving granulated good-byes like very fine sand. I'm
sure some remnant of your reflection is still around,
bouncing off yet another conniving surface. Like once,

stepping out of the shower towel-drying my hair,
I caught the elongated image of your tanned body
mirrored by the metal door frame's shiny handle. So
you're still within these walls, zipping in perpetual
motion, an amorphous mass of energized atoms in some
theoretical physics equation where the effect of
friction is suspended. You're still here, though
not as I would have it: seated on the bed, your back
against last night's pillows, your arm outstretched,
pointing the remote control at a flickering screen.
You're here in fragments. I gather your presence
with each sweeping of the floor, the way a poem
remembers its former drafts, collecting dead skin
cells of former selves.

***

JUDGE'S COMMENTARY
On his choices, Judge Oliver says:

I'm really fond of "Fireworks in the Rain." The narrative voice is strong and consistent with lovely lineation. The poem straddles the possibility of becoming too trite with its meta-textual consciousness, yet never allows itself to collapse . . . It's a narrative whose tension works on the levels of actor/action, writer/reader. I also responded to its craft, particularly the level of tension that moves from line to line. Not only is the ending moment of the line a pause, but also a moment of connection and disconnection.

"Is This Your Train" is a poem completely about lyrical pleasure: the lines ". . . Bit to bolt and tumbler, I tucked the dangerous vigor of my/color neatly away and longed for Hollywood pallor . . ." A poem about seduction should be sung seductively. The poet of this poem certainly does that.

"State of Emergency" is next because I've always had an attraction to turn/counterturn/stand formulation and here it is in this poem. It takes the poetic syllogism to intelligent philosophical turns . . . If this, therefore this. . .

"Inheritance: a sestina" takes on the difficult French form. The progress of the six end-words was exciting, and the narrative of the poem was consistent. There's still so much lyric possibility in this poem, which I think the first poem and the second poem fulfill.

“In Absentia” contained some lovely moments.

***

Here are more information about the winners, and their comments on their poems:

Naya S. Valdellon graduated in 2002 with a BFA in Creative Writing from the Ateneo de Manila University, where she was Associate Editor of Heights --the university's official literary publication. She was a fellow for poetry in English in the 38th UP National Writers Workshop (2001) and the 41st Dumaguete National Writers Worksop (2002). Her works have appeared in Heights, Tomas, Sunday Inquirer Magazine, The Philippines Free Press, Likhaan Online , and the 2000 Likhaan Book of Poetry and Fiction . She is currently an editorial assistant at the country's leading fashion magazine.

How I came to write "Fireworks in the Rain": After an actual fireworks in the rain sighting with my soon-to-be boyfriend in 1998, I wrote my first draft. The love poem was rejected by Heights but I knew I would rewrite it one day--the image was too rich to throw away. It came to me again as I was starting a new relationship last year, one where (at least initially) an ending was necessary. Framing the image as a memory and narrative device, I hoped to portray how our lives are made up of intertwined beginnings and endings. Yet beginnings (of love affairs, of written works) possess a kind of magic that lasts and sustains us, no matter how sordid things turn out in the end. And though we become wary of jumping into something new, the hidden truth is that we are thirsty for second, third, endless chances at love. I believe it's what keeps us going. And yes, Cafe Memento does exist--I hope to go back there someday for coffee and chimichanggas, alone or otherwise.

Michella Rivera-Gravage is a writer and filmmaker. Her work has been published in literary journals such as Shellac, Maganda and can be found in Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers . As a filmmaker, Michella's short film have screened at the NY Mix Festival, Visual Communications Festival and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. Michella is the post production supervisor at the Bay Area Video Coalition, where she has helped producers both at the grass roots level and those going on to air nationally on PBS.

On the poem: Sometimes I just wish people could articulate to each other what has gone into the recipe that create them. How did we learn to talk about desire and how did we discovered our gender, how do we talk about ethnicity, and so many other ingredients. These are things I think we tuck away most of the time, so I imagined a moment where I unraveling all that in front of a stranger. I thought of the subway because I think it's so funny how we press up against each other on a crowded train but pretend we are alone. It's a poignant example of how alienated we are from one another.

barbara j. pulmano reyes is the author of GRAVITIES OF CENTER (arkipelago books publishing, 2003), and is currently a mfa candidate at san francisco state university.

how i came to write the poem: was greatly influenced by a AECA reading at the poetry center at sfsu during the fall 2002 semester -- leon lee's explanation of how their group came to collaborate on a piece based on a concept of time being structured in spirals extending outward rather than in a linear way. also included elements of my usual desire/longing stuff.

Jennifer Macagba graduated from the University of Chicago in 2001 with a BA in English Language and Literature. In college, I was fortunate enough to meet Eleanor Wilner -- an amazing poet and teacher -- who lent me her copy of El Grupo McDonald's by Nick Carbo. It's safe to say that reading that collection changed my academic and poetic direction. After college, I enrolled at the University of the Philippines (Diliman) in the Comparative Literature department for the sole purpose of meeting and learning from the great Filipino scholars like Jimmy Abad, Neil Garcia and others. Though I'm on leave from the master's program with intentions to go back to Manila in 2004, I am currently involved with the Asian American Artists Collective of Chicago. I am published in Maganda Magazine, Aubade : a literary magazine at the University of Chicago, and Today's Chicago Woman .

I wrote "Inheritance: a sestina" while I was studying at UP Diliman in a workshop taught by the insightful Neil Garcia. Encouraged by Prof. Garcia, the poem was my first attempt at a sestina, my first attempt at confessional poetry, and my first poem dedicated to my mother. This poem was written at the culmination of a very difficult and amazing time in the Philippines, where every day I was challenged to defend my own ‘brownness' as well as humbled by it. This poem is a thank you to the voices from both borders who kept me honest during that journey.

Sid Gomez Hildawa (b. 1962) is a poet, visual artist, and architect. His poems have appeared in Philippine magazines and publications, including the anthologies, A Habit of Shores edited by Gemino Abad, and Philippine Studies: New Writing in the Philippines , edited by Emmanuel Torres. Hildawa was fellow to the national writer's workshops of the University of the Philippines and the Mindanao State University Iligan. His poem, "Collapsing Space," won 2nd prize in the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards 2001. He is currently finishing his Masters thesis in creative writing from the De La Salle University in Manila, under the mentorship of Cirilo Bautista, while working as director for the Cultural Resource Department of the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

My poem, "In Absentia," is a product of many personal concerns as both poet and architect. Among them are, "How is one's perception of space affected by the physical absence of the beloved?," and, " What does it really mean to be present in the physical world, for oneself and for someone else?" The writing of this poem led me to meta-physical possiblities, with links to the nature of writing itself. This was a difficult poem to write, and I thank my friends in our Alon poetry group (of poets from De La Salle University) for providing me with invaluable feedback.

============

SMALL PRESS TRAFFIC'S POETS' THEATER JAMBOREE 2003

Small Press Traffic
Literary Arts Center at CCAC
1111 - 8th Street
San Francisco, California 94107
http://www.sptraffic.org
415-551-9278

Eileen Tabios is one of a number of poet-playwrights featured in this year's wondrous & bizarre evenings of poets' theater! Reservations are recommended. Please call 415-551-9278 (after January 15) to make yours. As the Jamboree is a benefit for SPT, admission is $10 per night for everyone. This year's jamboree is curated by Taylor Brady, Brent Cunningham, Elizabeth Treadwell Jackson, & Kevin Killian. Eileen's play was directed by Michelle Bautista. Actors are Michelle. Barbara Jane Reyes and Summi Kaipa.

Friday, February 7, 2003 at 7:30 PM

Yvor Winters Puppet Play, directed by Andrew Joron
"She Tells Her Daughter" (1923) by Djuna Barnes, directed by Elizabeth
Treadwell (produced with the kind permission of Sun & Moon Press)
"But Seriously, When I was Jasper Johns' Filipino Lover..." by Eileen Tabios
"95 Old Men" by Mary Burger
"La Gnossienne" by Elizabeth Treadwell
(INTERMISSION)
"New Wave Bad Hair Day" by Brian Bauman
"Glow Farm, Glow!" by Lauren Gudath
"Hail Guantanamo!" by David Buuck
"Its night, the ash" by Stefani Barber
"Theater of No Feelings" by Brent Cunningham

================

W(H)INE-ING WITH EILEEN

An open letter from Eileen Tabios below describes the unique, subversive basis for her new blog, WinePoetics – recently named by Ron Silliman as one of the blogs he regularly reads once to twice a week.

http://winepoetics.blogspot.com/

Friends,
A "Blog" is an online journal. Last week, I experimented with setting up my own first blog entitled "Wine Poetics" and with the theme ostensibly being "wine-inspired poetics and poems." I say ostensibly because I just use wine as an arbitrary springboard to discuss many other things -- from politics (check out my account of being smuggled into a lunch with the Philippine President right under the Secret Service's noses) to book reviews to reprints of past works (including "Tapey," a rice wine story) to commentaries on Asian American literature, to discussing the inherent illusion of ekphrasis, and so on.

After being online for less than a week, my blog was featured in another poet's blog: "Elsewhere by Gary Sullivan" when he noted:

"... as Ron [Silliman] said in a blog about blogging a week or two back, one of the benefits of blogging is that it might lead the writer to write about things s/he might not have written (thus thought) about otherwise. Certainly this must be true for Eileen Tabios, who just started up a blog of her own, " WinePoetics ," a blog about wine and poetry. Bacchus, right? But, much more interesting than that, as it turns out--it's amazing what an odd, fixed idea will do to a writer, how it moves them, literally, through territory they might not otherwise have even known existed. // By that last sentence, I don't mean, like, the city of Pancevo--nothing so concrete as that. I mean where the mind might go."

Feel free to check out my ramblings (wine-induced or not). In it, you can see me meander from

why my mother is a tad irritated with poet and critic Krip Yuson for consistently discussing my work from a "sexualized perspective"; to

Nick Carbo's intriguing response (he sez, "I like the freedom of following your thoughts in this medium (like the effect of good wine), comes close to the experience of reading Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes while riding a horse on a carnival carousel. keep this up and you'll be giving Trinh T. Minh-ha (Woman Native Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism) a run for her money"); to

Bino Realuyo's willingness to pop the 2000 Wyndham Estates Bin 555 Shiraz from Australia to inaugurate my blog; to

Jose Garcia Villa's wine-poem; to

Philip Lamantia's fondness for pocket watches; to

a deceptively subversive "Asian American Food Poem" by Sarah Gambito.

And if any of you have any wine-related thoughts or poems, please do let me know!

Hic. Make Poetry Question! And look at the world from many angles!

Cheerfully,
Eileen
*****
FROM THE INAUGURAL POST:

WELCOME TO WINE POETICS
This weekend, I drank Poetry as defined by the Descendientes Palacios: Bierzo 1999, a red wine crafted by Spain's young superstar winemaker: Alvaro Palacios, and his nephew Ricardo Peres. A scion of a famous Rioja family, a former student at Petrus, and the maker of the great Finca Dofi and awesome L'Ermita, Senor Palacios looks for areas in Spain which have steep limestone hillsides containing hundred year old vineyards. The Bierzo is made from one such area that grows the Mencia grape.

I found it difficult to articulate what I was drinking as the Bierzo accompanied my meal at Roux in St. Helena. But I knew the wine was the most elegant I've enjoyed in recent weeks (that encompassed the fabulous 1995 Leonetti Cellar Merlot for Xmas and the 1982 Pavie for New Year's). The Bierzo is full-bodied, but weightless -- "weightless" like how Robert Parker sometimes describes the best of Lafite. One can say that the Bierzo contains dried fruit (e.g. black plums), roasted herbs and spice, but no wood (like cedar or oak). But that description doesn't even come close to describing the wine.

And this impossibility of articulation hearkens to the same elements that irritate, that nag, that tickle, and, finally, that seduce me into writing as a poet. In fact, my entry into fine wines was not so much due to my enjoyment of wine but through noticing and then being charmed by the wine-tasting jargon into which oenophiles often lapse (and they lapse into the language lamely, pathetically, but also gloriously: c'mon, when someone describes a wine with such an intriguing and itch-generating word like "unctuous," I want to taste how!).

I began exploring fine wine because I wanted to explore the language of wine lovers. And, ultimately, that exploration led me to move to my current residence in Napa Valley where I am surrounded by seemingly unending rows of vines -- one of many versions of my writing reality which, after all, may also be the task of the poet....

Welcome to WinePoetics !. Each post shall include wine recommendation(s)....and the rest shall be Poetry!

==============

2003 GLOBAL FILIPINO LITERARY AWARDS

OUR OWN VOICE announces a call for NOMINEES FOR THE 2003 GLOBAL FILIPINO LITERARY AWARDs.

The Editorial Board wishes to honor authors, and publishers of books by Filipino authors, published in 2002, from around the world

1. CATEGORIES are: poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

2. DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS: FEBRUARY 20, 2003.

3. Winners will be announced in the June 2003 issue of OUR OWN VOICE .

4. PRIZES: Winners will receive

--a plaque award
--the print version of OUR OWN VOICE 2001 .
-- a copy of Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole by Eileen Tabios (Contributing Editor, OUR OWN VOICE ); awardee may choose a library to whom Marsh Hawk Press (New York) shall send a copy of the Tabios book.
--Books selected for Award will be sent to a library of the author's choice.

5. QUALIFICATIONS: Nominees of 2002 books may be authors, agents, publishers and booksellers. Work of the members of the editorial staff and of others whose names appear on the OOV masthead are barred from nomination.

6. Please send TWO COPIES of the nominated 2002 published book to

GFL Award
Attn Reme-Antonia Grefalda
2001 North Adams Street
Suite 320
Arlington, VA 22201

7. A cover letter must accompany your submission with the following:

--author's name
--book title
--publisher
--copyright date and
--publication date

8. NOTE: Nominations will be accepted only if accompanied by a cover letter and two copies of the nominated work.

9. Please include an email address so we can acknowledge receipt of the material sent.

10. Material sent will not be returned.

11. Nominated submissions if sent by postal service must be postmarked no later than FEBRUARY 20, 2003. FEDEX, DHL and other express service will be accepted if delivered to meet the deadline.

Please send inquiries to our_own_voice@yahoo.com with the subject line: GLOBAL FILIPINO BOOK AWARD. We would appreciate if you could please disseminate this call to those you may know of who might be interested in this award.

Best wishes,
Reme-Antonia Grefalda
Editor, OUR OWN VOICE
www.oovrag.com

==============

SIDEREALITY ANNOUNCEMENT

Dear poetry readers,

A new issue of sidereality (Volume 2, Issue 1) is making its debut, so please take time to visit the website (http://www.sidereality.com) as soon as possible. Eileen Tabios is our Featured Poet in this issue: she has contributed nine of her newest poems to sidereality , and was kind enough to participate in an excellent, must-read interview.

We're also publishing new poems by the following talented writers: Arlene Ang, Alexandra Arruin, Nancy Bennett, John Benson, Greg Braquet, Janet Buck, Ric Carfagna, Garin Cycholl, Richard Denner, Charles Fishman, Candy M. Gourlay, Jonathan Hayes, David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Lewis LaCook, Andrew Lundwall, Andy Miller, Jonathan Minton, Mark Peters, Khadijah Queen, Tina Reigel, Chris Robideaux, Karen A. Romanko, Mark Stricker, John Sweet, Hugh Tribbey, Amy Trussell, William John Watkins, and Mark Young.

Six new reviews by Clayton A. Couch, Lewis LaCook, Bobbi Sinha-Morey, and Steven J. Stewart round out the issue.

Please be certain to pass along this message to friends, family, and other interested parties, as we can always accomodate new readers. Enjoy the new issue, and let me know what you think of sidereality .

Best wishes,
Clayton A. Couch
Managing Editor, _sidereality_
managingeditor@sidereality.com
http://www.sidereality.com

==============

Selections from A MUSEUM OF ABSENCES

An E-Chapbook of Poems By Luis H. Francia
Site Address: http://www.meritagepress.com/babaylanpubs.htm
Release Date: January 2003
Contact: Jade Afable at MeritagePress@aol.com

Meritage Press is pleased to announce the publication of an e-chapbook featuring poems by Luis H. Francia. His first e-chapbook is comprised of selections from a larger manuscript entitled A Museum of Absences . This on-line collection by the New York-based poet, editor, and nonfiction writer is the first comprehensive presentation of his poems since 1992's The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems , though individual poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies.

The cover offers a luminous photograph, Baro , by the Manila photographer Neal Oshima.

Mr. Francia describes how the manuscript developed: " A Museum of Absences began almost four ago, as a compilation of 1990s work, much of which dealt with absence and invisibility, whether personal, historical, or metaphorical, and the attendant world of loss and longing. Then the twin towers of Babel/New York collapsed. The horrific events of September 11, 2001 propelled me to write quite a number of poems on the tragedy, directly and indirectly. Many of these make up the bulk of the selections here."

A Manileño and a New Yorker, Luis H. Francia won the Palanca Memorial Award for Poetry, First Prize, in 1978. His previous books of poetry are 1979's Her Beauty Likes Me We ll (a two-poet collection, the other poet being David Friedman), and 1992's The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems . His 2001 semiautobiographical Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago won both the 2002 PEN Open Book and the Asian American Writers Workshop literary awards.

He has published a collection of essays and reviews, Memories of Overdevelopment (1998), and edited two literary anthologies: Brown River, White Ocean: Twentieth Century Philippine Literature in English (1993), and Flippin': Filipinos on America (co-edited with Eric Gamalinda, 1996). He co-edited, with media artist Angel Velasco Shaw, an anthology on the Philippine-American War, Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999 (2002). His works--both poetry and nonfiction--have appeared in anthologies, journals, magazines, and newspapers, in New York, San Francisco, Honolulu, Manila, Baguio, Hong Kong, Singapore, Madrid, and New Delhi. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and now teaches at New York University. He writes a column for The Sunday Inquirer Magazine in Manila and for The Village Voice in New York.

Mr. Francia's e-chapbook is free and downloadable through the Adobe pdf program. If you do not have the Adobe program, it may be installed for free from the Internet. Meritage Press gratefully acknowledges the poet Jerrold Shirroma and Duration Press for their beautiful design of Mr. Francia's e-chapbook.