1. The Dangers of This Craft Ma. Fatima V. Lim Wilson
How we sing, even as we are boiled alive.
Those who torment us strain to sustain
Our last notes. In a landscape
Of sameness, our crooked towers scrape
Sensibilities, the well-trained eye.
Why when starved, do we thrive?
Remembrance of childhood’s bread
Rising. The taste of dulcified
Dropping of air. Our well-
Meaning friends beg us, please,
Speak in the measured tones
Of the mediocre. Show off
Our mastery of muteness,
The ambidextrous virtuosity
Of work-stained hands. Let
Those knitting needles, heavy-
Handled axes fly. Why must
We hear voices? See the moving

2. Parts of still objects? And so,
We insist we no longer see
Through whitewashed walls.
We confessed our dreams of flying
Have ceased. We scheme,
The miracle of money keeping us
Awake. Our pleasure lies
In memorizing the exactness
Of recipes. We are found to be
Most eloquent when quiet, even
As we argue happily with the teeming
Inhabitants opening doors in our heads.
We stare seemingly unmoved at the fire
Of our burning books, all the while
Enthralled, reading secrets in the flames.
They think they’ve killed us off
Even as somewhere, everywhere, a child
Recalls the beat of the ocean womb.

3. They dance upon our tombs, unaware
Of how they have fallen
Victim to the rhythm
Of our singing bones.

4. gift Ma. Fatima V. Lim Wilson
I have imagined
Making love with you
So often
I am pulled ajar
When you walk towards me
Merely,
With all your clothes on.
We have come together
Countlessly
That I can bear the distance
Set by furniture and fabrics
Intimate friends, the air
And worst of all
The nights.

5. I have come to believe
In the power of those scenes
That when I touch things:
Bottles and handles,
Light switches,
And the soft insides
Of fruits,
They squirm,
Perturbed
By the violence
Surging through my thumbs.

6. Strange. You have never kissed me.
You brushed my elbow once
As we crossed the street
And my lower extremities
Were honey:
Every nerve, pore and cell
The havoc
Of hundreds and hundreds
Of singing, sweet bees.

7. To R. Ma. Fatima V. Lim Wilson
Though you sit beside me,
Brush your shoulder against mine,
And whisper close enough
To lull my cold ear to sleep,
I know you are somewhere else.
You are in a day-old petal
Floating on a puddle
Born from last night’s rain.

8. You are in secret lines I read
From some old poet’s heart-tale
Which my falling tears reveal,
And wash away.
You are in the little teeth of biting wind,
The outstretched hands of fallen branches,
And the silent stranger of a road I trod on
Walking, walking home

9. Your book of rhymes heavy in my folded arms
Your voice still in my ears
A lullaby of faded flowers
Walking, walking home
Shivering from yesterday’s rain.

10. FATIMA LIM-WILSON (1961–)
She studied English literature at the Ateneo de Manila University, graduating with a bachelor of arts cum laude in She traveled to Japan, as a scholar, and studied Japanese literature and language for one academic year. She then moved to the United States, where, in 1985, she earned an M.A. in English literature with an emphasis in creative writing from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She moved back to the Philippines and from 1986 to 1987 worked as the confidential assistant to Rene Saguisag, the spokesperson for the Corazon Aquino administration. When Saguisag won a senate seat, Lim-Wilson served as his confidential assistant from 1987 to She traveled back to the United States to continue graduate education and completed a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Denver in Just before finishing the doctorate, Lim-Wilson published her first collection, Wandering Roots/From the Hothouse, which won both the Philippine National Book Award and the Colorado Book Award.
As a notable success in the world of creative writing, Lim-Wilson has received numerous awards, scholarships, and grants worldwide, which include Palanca Awards (Philippines) and scholarships from the Universities of Vienna and Oslo, Oxford University, Uppsala University in Sweden, and University