#jolography

O, how dead you child are, whose spoiled

Sportedness is being fashion showed

 Beautifuling as we speak -- in Cubao

There is that same look: Your Crossing Ibabaw,

 Your Nepa Cute, Wednesdays

Baclaran, "Please pass. Kindly ride on."

 Tonight will be us tomorrowed-

Lovers of the Happy Meal and its H,

 Who dream of the importedness of sex as long as it's

Pirated and under a hundred, who can smell

 A Pasig Raver in a dance club. O, the toilet

Won't flush, but we are moved, doing the gerby

 In a plastic bag; we want to feel the grooves

Of the records, we want to hear some scratch-

 In a breakaway movement, we're the shake

To the motive of pockets, to the max.

 The change is all in the first jeep

Of the morning's route. Rerouting

 This city and its heart attacks; one minute faster

Than four o'clock, and the next

 Wave that stands out in the outdoor crowd

hanging with a bunch of yo-yos-

 A face with an inverted cap on, wearing all

Smiles the smell of foot stuck between the teeth.’

Selfies are out and shelfies are in, at least for us literature enthusiasts who believe that our choice of reading materials reveals more about who we are than our ability to do a duck face.

Featured in this post is a shelfie of our colleague, Dr. Paolo Manalo. Paolo currently teaches for the DECL, where he is also the head of the Creative Writing Program. He obtained his PhD from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland -- and if you think the university sounds familiar, it is most likely because St. Andrews is also the alma mater of a certain Prince William, Duke of Cambridge. Google "Paolo Manalo" and one of the more impressive facts you will read about is his winning the 2002 Carlos Palanca Award for Poetry for his poetry collection Jolography. You will also notice the fact that most people who Google his name also Google the name "Bob Ong."

(So is he or isn't he Bob Ong? We knocked on his office door and flat-out asked if he was the man behind the nom de plume, and this is what he had to say: "I have agreed with Visprint neither to deny nor confirm this.")

Here is the shelfie from another angle.