Never

From the collector's notebook of substitutions
by Conchitina Cruz



Say grief: things that wander with the intention to return

Say maybe: things that entertain the possibility of always

Say afterthought: things that haunt rather than invade

Say souvenir: not erasure, but palimpsests

Say disappear: letter, sans serif, white, umlaut

Say collateral: not risk, mere substitution

Say document: proof and signpost

Say never: things that breathe easy elsewhere




***

Look for her poetry collection "Elsewhere held and lingered." One heavy reading. Poem after poem, napa-"shit, grabe ang galing" yata ako. Harrows you with its intense revelations and examinations of a self that survives?/perils?/fragments? itself due to an illicit affair.
The author surely ranks among the best of poets in the country today.