Amphora

Oh dear howler look to the honey-eyed

poet and kiss the sun on your way to

their meandering eyes, their sullied sight

Do not beg for mercy, beg for grace

Beg for all that you have ever chosen

for each tear, each time your mouth

cracked open. Beg over and over 

for you are worthy and they are not

Sigh over the mountains, unearth the very

valley, cry for the hollowed riverine

moving in shadow plays, hidden

Even from themselves

Dear howler, beg for your child

whose eyes are your husband’s

whose mouth is just like your own

cracked open over a prophecy that 

she cannot keep down or even swallow

Become honey-eyed also and guttural

Become a scream and embody

your own grace.

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Bio:

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Kired Quidangen is an Itneg-Ilocano writer from the hinterlands of the Ilocos Country. They work in poetry, translation, and visual art drawing from their ancestry of historical placelessness and their coming to age with the parental supervision of the internet in the time of intensifying environmental disasters. Their ongoing projects include navigations of the intersections of poetry and visual art as collaborative and collocate mediums, and the intricacies of mother tongue translations.