Zosimo Quibilan Jr.: California Poets Part 10, Four Poems

Zosimo Quibilan Jr.

April 2nd, 2026

California Poets: Part X

Zosimo Quibilan Jr.

Four Poems

All Your Saturdays Over

One of these days, we’d get the hang

of this game. We would finally be able to tell

the difference between a goal

and a free kick. We would clasp our hands

in prayer and defer judgment for when a handball

is deliberate, when they cross the pitch, and genuflect

a day early, hoping that this kid was not really

bleeding, and that boy wouldn't need a cast.

My son told me he kicked sod

one Saturday. He watched it soar halfway as high

as the posts when his baby sister's team's match ended

eight minutes in, just right after the second water

break. Football–we still insisted on calling it. A relearning

of movements using feet. An exercise in patience.

One of these days, I would finally forget

the game that I used to love, an ocean away where we were

always wanting in everything, except imagination. Reluctantly,

I would teach my kids how to patiently fashion a rebar

into their best impression of a circle. We would nail it

to a repurposed political billboard, and hoist it up in the middle

of the apartment complex's shared lawn–a forgotten monument,

from a memory in high school shooting with an oblong ball, bouncing

obliquely, under a sky overcast with coup plotters flying vintage Tora! Tora!

Tora!s and loyalist forces soldiers, parachuting above the embassy,

that is now also ours, where everyone was watching Pete,

Doug and Irma during halftime. One of these days, we would try

to learn this other game. Our American one–as my native-born daughter

refers to it, “like hot potato.” Where the ball is passed around

and not “footed.” A hopeful sport, that begins

with a song, with some kneeling and cheering and bruising,

the last one to resist without getting too obvious,

where every week begins on a Friday anthem.

Keeping Post

The postman keeps his cool

notwithstanding

June gloom.

He walks as sure

as the hem of his shorts stops

just below the knee.

I keep surprises, too.

The sprinklers will turn

on without notice. I never

pick up after Reyna. It is still not safe

to venture outdoors. She always barks

and bites her own tongue. She loves

tasting  blood with a sliver of skin

and stamps and subscriptions.

But the coupons just keep coming

like junk mail. So my wife and I keep vigil,

casing the mailbox when we can.

A few days ago, we started filling out

coupons. We signed one

and then another, and stuffed

every single one into the box, gracefully

as a dance step, carefully with a prayer. Our hopes,

erect as the rusty flag on the box.

Someday, something we actually want

will arrive. I have a list somewhere

and it will be great if I can just find it

again. Pancakes. News. RNA fragments.

For now, we gather all unopened envelopes

we started collecting since the last pandemic.

I lay them flat then my wife slices each one

into passable squares. Together, we fashion

impossible origami shapes. Our house is a paper

menagerie with pointlessness

for the return address.

After we’re done, if it ever comes to this,

I will hold my breath until I can't. Then she will

hold it, too, for as long as I can.

Will Work for Work

The line has since been dispersed,

a violence flaunting precision. 

All too familiar, scampering

everyday in every direction –

workers all, off to see

California.

Today, he is the lucky one

to get to walk away. One heavy step

after another. I share his leather brown skin.

The rosary around his neck sways in synch

with my rearview mirror decor

dangling free of directions.

He stares at me and stops to wag his finger

before moving on. I slow down to let a truck

pick up dust instead of him.

Unmarked, unnamed ,

unnerved as we all are

risking everything 

to stop again.

He squints before this ever promising,

most brutal SoCal winter morning.

He tugs at loose yarns on his gloves.

Assuredly unraveling a secret that he claps off

like dust, calluses he rubs longingly instead of flesh.

When his compadres return, they wait again

without regret and wave at passing cars.

A pregnant supplication. A praying for snow.

Lake Arrowhead

This lake can quench my unexamined thirst

for rest or perhaps a stretching of marginalization

weaving through State Route 18, always suggesting escape

until it ends. A cold dip today might do the job. Voices tease me

to let go of the boat, let go of fear. Graze over grass, watch

broken blades become vermillion. A carefully chosen

stone growing into middle age with spotty patches of beard,

greens yellowing. I put too much faith in things

and trinkets. A cloud changing density.

Foulness fomenting the air. I can taste it. I can see it.

Tell me, ask me to stop talking. Listen. It has

something for you. A distant squawking quickly

forgotten. A present that listens, patient, nurtures.

Author Bio:

Zosimo Quibilan Jr. is an award-winning Filipino American fictionist, poet, playwright, musician and culture bearer based in Los Angeles. His book of Tagalog fiction, Pagluwas (Going to the City) won the 2006 Philippine National Book Award and the prestigious Madrigal Gonzalez Best First Book Award in 2008. His Tagalog poetry collection, Ang Tanging Natagpuan (The Only Thing Found) was published by the University of the Philippines Press last year. Quibilan's English poems and stories have appeared in KCET, Kweli Journal, Nature of Our Times (Paloma Press, 2025), Signos (Radix NY, 2025), Altadena Poetry Review (2025), Ulirat (Gaudy Boy, 2021), Philippines Graphic (2022) among many others.

Quibilan has written plays and musicals including 2Bayani (Cultural Center of the Philippines 1996 and Arete Ateneo, 2022) and Liwanag (Radiance) - both about the 1896 Philippine Revolution vs Spain and ensuing American colonization.  He performs as singer-songwriter ZOS!MO in Los Angeles and leads No Sisig No Rakenrol, a musicians collective promoting original Filipino American music.