Lawrence Ypil (b. 1978)

1. BIOGRAPHY

2. CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

3. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

4. SELECTED POEMS

• Porch

• Childhood

• Aria

• recollect

• The Nature of a City

• The Experiment of the Tropics

• In the Manner of Thinking

• For Every Man

• In the Time It Takes

SELECTED POEMS

In the Time It Takes

In the time it takes for the shadow of the world 
        to reach the shadow of the knee
of the woman sitting in the park under a tree
                                                             a photograph is developed.

Drip, drip, splash.
        Then alright.
                  Then a dry mount
                  against the wet, wet grass.

When the city's architects asked what could be done with the past,
they didn't anticipate glass.                         They believed the ocean
with its endless shimmer of always would make the dame denizens
of the city sick from squinting at the sea.

What reprieve the streets could be, what rain
          falling endlessly from the eaves of shophouses
                  as a line of trees becomes the token gesture
          nature makes to signify an elsewhere here
where a woman slowly rises to become the shadow of a shadow of 
me.

by Lawrence Ypil
from Likhaan: The Journal of Contemporary Philippine Literature, 2018: Likhaan Commemorative Issue (2020)

BIOGRAPHY >