The teacher broke a finger of chalk for the three.
They drew their flags on the board,
Amounting to twenty-four rays of the suns.
That’s not so much astronomy
as anatomy. With the flesh of a fist, one of them smudges
the junction of the three-way, erasing one
Star, fixing in that vanished corner
a chalk outline. Lace
our fingers so even / the black of it goes.
Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo
Dennis Andrew S. Aguinaldo teaches literature courses for the Department of Humanities of the University of the Philippines Los Baños. He is the author of Shift of Eyes and Bukod sa maliliit na hayop, short stories and poems respectively.
Cosmic Double 