(A tribute to martial law victims in Samar)
Transitions are tricky to handle.
If only a few days after were merely a habit
in storytelling to render the plot more credible.
So that what came first could be understood
as requisite for another to occur. As such, horrifying
stories are easier to make sense of. As when you’re told
by a midlife woman of her story, who at nine
witnessed her parents’ ordeal from a tight sack
into which she was sealed, an inch of the straw weave
she holed out to see how bodies she had known
her young life could die grotesquely, slowly,
apart from the real life she lived in, while suspended
from a tree she had climbed, more times than she could count,
its canopy the flourish of her childhood, her mother
assured of the growing strength in her legs.
Who could tell how days were to be different?
As that day that began with the usual early sunrise
for the meal that brought them around a table
soon to be the site to their torment. The nearing
raucous of men in search of those who sympathize
with ideas sturdier than their guns filled the house
and hours after, cluttered the implements of home.By midday, stripped naked of her clothes, her mother
had walked around in a circle of madness, forced
to confess to a treason that in their daily hunger
she barely understood, not an inch of her skin
left unscathed. Her abdomen ripped open
when they could no longer take hold of her flesh.
Her blood streaming into unyielding fields.
Her father fainted after hours of beating, a toe severed
from too much pounding of a rifle butt. In between
the wailing were bodies crossing a threshold.The sun rose with her still in the air, a fruit too heavy
of its own sap, a knowing she would have exchanged
for anything to go back to those days when the hours
faded without fear. When she didn’t have to say
a few days after to tell the story of her life,
when fleeting forgetfulness could be the only reprieve
of years ahead. But such was to be the plot of her story
as with those others she has soon come to learn,
who had hung from a tree, impaled, or maimed.Of too much pain, one survives
by taking it in parts. So a few days after is easier
on the tongue as it is on the mind. For how
lives could be told as they unfold, ravaged
before our eyes. They are the kindest words
to stall what could pass off as history,
chronicled now behind this lens to discern
how darkness unhinges, in between the sun
setting and rising, in between breathing,
in the flesh ripping apart, in the minds losing
what it could hold, numbed into
what it could wake up to
a few days after
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones