Jose Padua: How the Gardener of Sorrows Tends to the Sadness of Things
I tend this landscape of terrible sadness because it is my duty to bring order to this garden of loss, to pull out the weeds that crowd out the flowers … Continue reading
Jose Padua: Still Life with the Wrecked Monuments of My Youth
First, the hospital where I was born was torn down. Next, the building where I went to grade school was no longer a school and the apartment that was the … Continue reading
Jose Padua: A Song for Sunshine
This evening when I got home from the store I laid a bag down on the kitchen table and said to my wife and daughter, “Check this out.” My wife … Continue reading
Jose Padua: Whenever My Son Sees Horses
Whenever my son sees horses by the side of the highway I wonder what it would be like to ride them. To feel tall with the horse’s added height and … Continue reading
Jose Padua: Night on Earth and the Labor of Our Efforts at Being Still
We were all there to watch the darkness happen. The trains moved into it, the bums, the losers, the lost and stepped upon watched it rise above their tilted heads. … Continue reading
Jose Padua: In Acknowledgement of My Ancestors, Predecessors, and Everyone Else Who Dared Cut to the Truth of the Matter
I am indebted to the weird sometimes indecipherable black magic of speech and the fluid motion of tongues spilling the content of souls. — Copyright 2016 Jose Padua Photograph by … Continue reading
Jose Padua: On the Grammar of the Days and These Evenings of a Million Words
These warm sunny afternoons I remember how my father would sit on the front porch for minutes, maybe hours, saying it was a good day to have a sunbath. It … Continue reading
Jose Padua: Walking the Bridge with My Young Daughter in the Late American Spring
If we were walking over the Brooklyn Bridge, the voice I’d be hearing might be Lena Horne’s, but we’re walking over the Key Bridge from Virginia into DC so the … Continue reading
Jose Padua: The Philosophy of Flowers v. The Speed of Life
It was probably the day before my dad died that I brought in from the car the September 2011 issue of Poetry, in which I found the card he had … Continue reading
Jose Padua: My True Love and Other Colors
Just off the exit from the Interstate, the man with the red, white, and blue American flag painted on the wall of his garage has the words Love These Colors … Continue reading
Jose Padua: Amused and Delighted under the Falling Sky
Poetry is fundamental like raw fish. Not everyone likes it, but for those who do partake there are benefits, not all of which are about beauty and music and elegance … Continue reading
Jose Padua: A Poem About UFOs Ending with a Flashback to Days Long Gone
Whenever time passes more quickly than I think it should, I wonder if I’ve been abducted by a UFO. I check if all my body parts seem to be in … Continue reading
Jose Padua: Getting Away with the Days and Other Ways of Measuring Time
I was barely twenty-one driving my car from the north end of campus past the dorms by the railroad tracks then down the grassy lane next to the stately building … Continue reading
Jose Padua: A Brief Note on the Effect of Pig’s Blood on the Migration of Souls
At a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, in February, 2016, fascist/racist presidential candidate Donald Trump repeated the apocryphal story that in the Philippines, more than a century ago, Gen. … Continue reading
