Read Troy Cabida’s essay “On Neon Manila: A Balancing Act Between Sparkle and Substance” HERE.

[EXCLUSIVE] “Four Poems from Neon Manila” by Troy Cabida

Troy Cabida, Neon Manila, Nine Arches Press, 2025. 72 pgs.

Black Turtleneck Sonnet

With my first ever credit card, I bought one the brand called
the Newman: a stylish, manly neck, heavy duty against the cold.
I call my favourite one the Monroe: warm, merino and thin
like second skin, my favourite black slip.
One winter I got tired of the elaborate and thought-through
so I bought three of the same piece, black lambswool I wore in rotation.
I sprayed perfume on the chest
enjoyed the consistent praise they gave me,
the kind of clean they made me feel.
My first cashmere was bought in haste, thought the fast pace
would make the purchase easier to forget.
I had sex with a stranger the first time I wore it.
The material was hot against my torso after putting it back on.
It felt like a returning, like desire close to my skin once again

I invoke the spirit of Sarah Harris while shopping for my next pair of jeans

Everyone in Kensington High Street is too busy wearing out their poodles and Neverfulls that no one has noticed Biba has been gone for decades now. The upscale exhibit space that took over the building sells broomsticks for £150 a piece. It reminds me of diamonds and how it took only one strategy meeting in the 1940s for me to call them an investment for my emotional security. The floppy haired guy who works for the Waterstones nearby isn’t in today. I was going to ask him out last Christmas but I’m scared I’ll become Weird Poetry Guy on their work group chat. It feels kind of insidious seeing white people’s faces on the cover of ethnic cookbooks, so I do right by my people and put a graphic novel in front of a hardback on panAsian cuisine. The lighting in the clothes shop next door makes my skin glow a complimentary kind of yellow, as if the changing room is trying to say I see your body and despite your thighs I can make you catalogue handsome. I hate myself for hating the way my body looks. Rachel Long says I won’t look like this forever. I don’t even look like this now. In the shop next next door the lighting is less cinematic but they know the optics between hugging and hiding. I buy two: Barbie blue denim in ankle length and slim. In another version of this day, I would still be in bed with a man-lover I barely know, no clothes in sight. In reality, I want to let out a guttural scream because everyone here thinks I’m an exchange student and therefore do not contain any human emotions. I buy myself a box of cookies. 

Friends with Freudian Theory of Inversion

(1) Deviations in Respect of the Sexual Object

The popular view of the sexual instinct remains so today
because many can’t hear the noise in the silence, the poetic fable
that evolves according to its chosen host and context:
the original human beings were cut up into two halves—
man and woman approaching me outside the tapas place
hand in hand. They will listen to my latest dating stories
and lament how much harder it is for those whose sexual object
is not similar to those of their more Instagrammable friends,
perpetually punished for having these ‘contrary sexual feelings’,
or better, as being ‘inverts’. They don’t say it outright
of course, that wouldn’t be politically tasteful, but later
while holding hands on the bus, they’ll think about me
alone on the Jubilee Line, feel sorry and other vague desires
to do something, but will have difficulties in establishing it precisely.

Chanel No. 22

student of haute couture perfumery
draped in tuberose and incense
firm against exploding flashbulbs
you are untouchable
in your signature fragrance
that smells of your mother’s makeup
onlookers will say why can’t they
just wear something simple
as in invisible              as in already dead       dear
good boy keeping face
please know
you wear it well                      all of it well
make it look so light

^{How to cite: Cabida, Troy. “Four Poems from Neon Manila.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 27 Jan. 2026. chajournal.com/2026/01/27/neon-manila-poems.}

Troy Cabida is the author of Neon Manila (2025), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His pamphlets include War Dove (2020) and Symmetric of Bone: poems after Elsa Peretti (2024), a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. [All contributions by Troy Cabida.]