Ivy Alvarez

Bio: Ivy Alvarez is the author of Diaspora: Volume L (California: Paloma Press), The Everyday English Dictionary (London: Paekakariki Press), Disturbance (Wales: Seren) and Mortal. A MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a Hawthornden Fellow, her work is widely published and anthologised, including in Best Australian Poems (2009 and 2013), with several poems translated into Russian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. Born in the Philippines and raised in Australia, she lived in Wales for almost a decade, before arriving in New Zealand in 2014. www.ivyalvarez.com

Bahay na bato

On Sunday, we return the keysto the mausoleum in which I liveda year in solitude watched overby creatures of fur and feather,chitinous arachnidCauterous memories collapsingevery time I touched them,powdering to saltWhat does time matter nowWhat did we learn — our lesson?Twenty-five years is a longtime to waver in and out and we livedwith the vow like a sentenceof happily ever afterwhere after begins with the gateswinging open the keysforgotten and long behind usand we remember how goodthis tastes the flavourof infinity

Filipino idiom meaning prison (literally, house of stone)

Bakbakan

we don’t really do thisor we didn’t not reallyin the past we’d relied on silencesraised eyebrows frownsa sigh and a pursed lipacceding to what you neededand the silences filled the blanka cake layering of airthe nothing tasting of somethingbitter perhaps all I know isin the bedroom we exchangeda look that said I changedmy mind that said I haven’tthe semaphore of our facesquiet and frantic our bodiesfurious at these plans we’d made

Filipino idiom meaning a fight; a serious quarrel (literally, when something is being removed or pulled off)

Roridula dentata

gummy glue-like claritywith inflorescences dependinghairy pedicles waxingaxils of upper leaves
hapless attractants cluster to resina pantry of stuck comestiblesstrewn on body aeratingto be picked by one in symbiosisroaming with immunity to pluck and feed
defecate something nitrogenous for the leavespollinate and crawl and eatin all the ways a plant cannotcreate a self that exists without assistanceof some sortto live

Byblis liniflora

I hard to tell if I amwho I say I am
do I feed on leavingsor the meat itself
it’s right for youto doubt definitions
the dew on my bodyonly confuses
you’d call me beautifulin the right light
yet my hungerhas such small teeth
you bandy my beautywhen it’s dangerous
my sessile glandsare warning and proof
I digest my prey slowlydissolve every mouthful

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