Dinah Roma

[thepoetslizard]

Dinah Roma graduated from De La Salle University, Manila (1990) with a double degree in Marketing Management and Literature. She is a fellow of the Silliman Writers Summer Workshop in Dumaguete City and of the University of the Philippines Summer Writers Workshop, where she was awarded the Likhaan Award for Poetry. In 1993, she left for Japan to research Japanese cinema and stayed to earn her MA degree in comparative culture at Kyoritsu Women's University in Tokyo. She joined De La Salle University, Manila in 1998 where she is now Vice-Chair of the International Studies Department.





"After Prayers"

You are the ember atop
the incense stick,
a stillness before the quiver,
the soft ashen fall
that calls to fragrance
the breath
beneath our prayer.

You are the vespers
of a plea,
feast of dusky skies;
the stark rush
and ascent of grace
past the austere
of lent.

You are the mist
veiling our sight at night,
a benediction
of clasped hands
redeeming as the vigil
of a moment's unfolding,
penitential as the icons
pressing against
our hearts.


*

"Maya, Rekindled"

Scaling distance to warmth,
you held this hand
as the night’s mist
on my hair.

Earlier the day,
I would have thought
it illusion. The ground
you stood on, space
limned to emptiness —
heart ushering another
to shadowy brilliance.

Elsewhere now,
she awaits
each day
sweet
incandescence.

*


"To Love Unknown"

Over the night, the snow has settled into a familiar thickness. The adjacent café is still in its neon rapture while the gray rooftop across glitters in the night’s unceasing softness. Today, the room is suffused with a fierce lustre, just as when you left early dawn and left your tracks deep in the snow outside the porch winters ago.

There was something in your faltering steps; the way your head pulled to the ground that told of an incipient loss. I wanted to call you back in, into the reliable dimness of my room, into that corner you always sulked against after an impossible day, to welcome the bright and calm. But you had left before I knew.

Who would have thought winter deceives this way? Was it the cold language strangely thawing names? Was it the walls binding us to light and space that shadowed discontent? Wasn’t it you who argued, on the day when distance became unbearably winter itself, that home is joy revived repeatedly? I have since sought affinity from currents of air and oceans, circled heart’s geography, but each time I step into the room, I am farther away from presence.

The snow falls. Everything outside humbled.


*


"Here, The Story"

Here, you shall find the story
as the sun rims brave
your heart for the familiar
call to the inhabitable.

Curl to my side
and I am moon,
precious flesh of light,
a gift supine
on the orb of your eyes —
depth to my precipice.

Grieve what your voice
knows of love's edge,
and the heart, moved
before its first sorrow,
will wander deep
into harsh origin—joy
wounding core.

Before dusk slows
down the hours and the air
wearies your words,
tell me the story:
how bodies grazed
assemble earth.

*

Web Source:
SoftBlow
www.softblow.com/dinah_roma.html





"Calligraphy"
www.wordfeast.com/writers/samples/20-2.asp


"Unseen Photographs"
www.wordfeast.com/writers/samples/20-1.asp