Decades apart, we share histories despite / women that we are, we are wounded in the same breasts / we cry for each other’s pains and laugh / at our follies. We love our sisters and our children. / Your tongue speaks in abstractions — / we are taught to hide our sorrows / women are always crowned with suffering and confusion. / Which way shall we travel / this life in this planet? / You speak of life beyond, and I live / for this life now, pained yet alive. / I wish to see that life beyond / but one must teach me to speak / in abstract forms, life has been a concrete / asphalt of struggles. Summers of memories / we again march the blood-soaked streets.

– From “At Eliazo, Evening Of A People’s Strike”

MANGLED MORNINGS: Collected Poems

Aida F. Santos

The poetry of Aida Santos in this collection, which spans more than half a century, transforms the continents and islands, the villages and beaches, the parties and rallies of her exterior world into the richly contoured geography of an interior life. As we read her poems, we journey through the climes of these terrains of the spirit, unweathered yet by extreme weather, and habitually attentive to the uncommon lessons of everyday phenomena such as sunrises and sunsets. She is most vital and pithy when she pays homage to departed friends and comrades in the revolutionary movement. How does the woman poet as a survivor of grave loss and much graver suffering endure? Santos as a witness interrogates herself and sings to us the high notes of her repartees. – Lina Sagaral Reyes

Publication Date: 2019
Language: English 
Format: Softbound
Pages: 120
Size: 8.5” x 5.5”
ISBN: 978-621-95663-8-4
Selling Price: PHP 340
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