PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

Ruben Cuevas

I shall never exchange my fetters for slavish servility. ’Tis better to be chained to the rock than be bound to the service of Zeus.
--Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound

Mars shall glow tonight, Death shall not unclench me.

Artemis is out of sight. I am earth, wind, and sea!
Rust in the twilight sky Kisses bestow on the brave
Colors a bloodshot eye, That defy the damp of the grave
Or shall I say that dust And strike the chill hand of
Sunders the sleep of the just? Death with the flaming sword of love.
Orion stirs. The vulture
Hold fast to the gift of fire! Retreats from the hard, pure
I am rage! I am wrath! I am ire!
The vulture sits on my rock, Thrust of the spark that burns,
Licks at the chains that mock Unbounds, departs, returns
Emancipation’s breath, To pluck out of death’s fist
Reeks of death, death, death. A god who dared to resist.

SWEATER
Mark Angeles

When I hold this sweater I picture you. One summer we were in Baguio rummaging the hills of used clothing when you
said something about mystery schools. The curious cat that I was I began making a mountain out of a molehill. You
answered back with a piece of wool sweater- Celtic green patterns coiling on onyx black- and with serious, subterranean
eyes, you covered me with it as though it was a blanket and said, “Kasya kaya?” For a moment I was tentative I was there.
I was there, alright, but I was somebody else, or somewhere else, like a headless mannequin, strangely naked making the
most of myself- the replacement of someone corporeal. And so when you said, “Kasya kaya?”, I pokerfaced. That night
when it started to drizzle, you knocked on my door and said you will be out for a while, some rendezvous. Perhaps with
your mystery school. But you never returned. You left me with this sweater which I carried back to our hometown without
the slightest idea who it was for.

When I hold this sweater, I imagined you. One summer, I surveyed Baguio, alone, and paved my way through hills of old
clothes, inhaling their rot and story. The schmaltzy beaver that I was I began conjuring the people who once wore them. I
imagined them ailing or dead, their next of kin granting the Salvation Army their possessions as a symbol of releasing
themselves from the memory of skin. I salvaged a piece of wool sweater-hideous and impersonal- and with you in my
mind, I mumbled “Kasya kaya?” For a moment I was certain you were there. I didn’t know where you were really. You
were like a drizzle. You knocked on my window in tiny and almost invisible pieces. I longed for rain, the solidness of
glass. I bought the sweater with a will of a harbor that you will sail back to me. (If not in time, it would not matter. So
long as you arrived).

When I hold this sweater I have the hankering to think of someone. I try to remember who it was-shuffling faces, names,
places in my mind. (Will it help to think where I bought this piece of clothing?) It feels as if I was trying to grab strings of
smoke rising from a blazing photograph, as though I am trying to squeeze shards of glass in my hands until they sink their
teeth into my palms. I remember a scene, though vaguely. I suppose it was drizzling by the whiff of damp earth. I
remember this sweater, its green patterns coiling on black, on bedside, in a manner it is worn by a person lying there with
his face down like a grapefruit beaten to a pulp.