What comes after untimely death? What happens after the crash, the capture, the gunshot, the explosion, the crime, the massacre? In poems that inhabit the precipice and aftermath of violence, Eliza Victoria ponders the work of offering an account. Language is the tenuous afterlife the poems valiantly flesh out, considering what it means “to reconstruct what has already destroyed you.” Victoria is particularly attentive to the stakes of narrativizing by those designated to take on the task—the reporter, the literary writer—and it is testament to an acute awareness of the limits of this vantage point that the collection often turns to “notes” as a poetic form. This is a moving book—distressing, alert, and necessary. —Conchitina Cruz.

1. Philippine poetry (English)