Corporeal

Poetry. "To '[r]emember how / to touch our bodies' is to embark on the inevitable: 'there was / a plot; / [you] did not / escape.' As Jean Vengua notes in CORPOREAL, the journey contains peril: 'Aswang repairs her wound / with bone and thread.' However, knowledge is its own good: 'but / grow to love the scars.' These poems are scars from bodily interactions--with ourselves, with others, with environs, and even with language. What for? Perhaps 'a new angel, thrashing / on the wings'? That Vengua articulates 'angel' implies hope. From a body intimate with suffering, such hope presents potential for ecstasy--in these poems, the poet's 'wrists are magic' and the receptive reader can be led to grace if not bliss: 'some kisses are / sweeter than wine.'" --Eileen R. Tabios