Drift : poems / Joel H. Vega.

Includes notes.

The First Element 3 -- Interiors 4 -- Dante's Recuerdo 5 -- Incident 6 -- The Bell 7 -- Inertia 9 -- Minglanilla 10 -- Portrait of Maude Abrantes by Modigliani 11 -- Learning How to Breathe 12 -- Birdhouse 13 -- No Lullaby 14 -- What Gives this Discordant Body 15 -- Latitudes 16 -- Pistia Stratiotes 19 -- If this Dirty River Could Only Speak 20 -- Amulet 22 -- Lower Occult in Downtown Quiapo 24 -- Black Nazarene Feast 25 -- Two Streets, Three Endings 26 -- My Quiapo Republic 27 -- A Sad Day in the Body 29 -- Story Unfolding Backwards 30 -- Cross Country 32 -- Songs to a Fallen Comrade 34 -- Checkpoints 35 -- Those Who Fell Before Us 37 -- The Fifth & Careful Season 39 -- Lock 43 -- Sternum 45 -- Scalpel 47 -- Nephrectomy.--Anatomy.--The Errant Body.--Wounded Rose.--Purse String.--Subcutaneous.--The Weighing.--Geography.--The Heart Takes What it Can.--Tattoo.--Moulting.--Pluviose.--Pluviose, Daybreak.--Earthline.--Leaf & Monsoon Rain.--Two Endings.--Elsewhere in the Mountains.--The most Tactile of Stones.--Recitation.--Atacama.--In Paris.--This Poem was once a Deer.--Tectonics.--How I Hold the Living.--Drift 82.

To put words on paper and see the lines physically embody the anguish in my head and heart was to me, at that tender age, a charmed moment that triggered a life-long love affair with words and language. Language is both terra cognita and incognita, geography to explore, a territory that can isolate while providing comfort at the same time. Poetry burns. Or at least, I believe it should leave a mark. The writing and reading of poetry involve engraving.