“Alden Arsèn”
Mark Alden Arsenal received the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature (2025), the Philippines’ Graphic Salute Award (2025), the Don Vicente Rama Memorial Literary Prize (2023), and the Omar Khalid Literary Award (2023). He is a member of the BATHALAD-Sugbo and the Sunday Club. He is also the author of the Cebuano single-essay chapbook, Walay Bayot Sa Langit (2025).
Both of my poems are autobiographical. In “Black Ant,” I allude to the “nanlaban” phenomenon during the drug war, where the state was so wary of its own imagined threats and killed people for things that either had not happened or would not happen. Conversely, “Trigger” explores post-traumatic stress syndrome caused by the extrajudicial killings, especially among parents whose children were victims.