This debut collection responds to Allen Grossmans “bitter logic” of the poetic principle, confronting poetrys limits as it reaches for the human: its failures of address, its impulse to preserve what inevitably slips away. These poems move within that tension, asking how a self can be held even as it changes in the very act of being named. Jan Dennis Destajo probes personhood in poetry—how a voice is formed, framed, and sometimes undone by its own language.

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Here are poems that inhabit and illuminate the overlapping spaces of poetry and architecture, "that good middle"--a rivetingly good middle-from which to re-view the engineering and design, the gossip and actual criticism on the precise yet imprecise nature and function of art.

-Isabela Banzon,  author of  Tilt Cards & Only Neon

Umiikot sa mga personal na pananaw at paninindigan ang mga tula ni Ella Hermonio na hinubog ng mga araw-araw na danas—mga alaala, pagdududa, at munting pagbubunyag—kasabay ng tahimik ngunit makapangyarihang presensiya ng mga pusa: bilang saksi, kasama, at minsan ay salamin ng panloob na buhay ng nagsasalita.

"Labinlimang tula tungkol sa pusa at pagkatao itong isa sa tatlong aming napili para sa Gacha Chapbook Contest. Kahanga-hanga ang liksi ng imahinasyon ni Ella Hermonio sa pagninilay sa anyo at tunog ng tula. May lambing sa kanyang paglalaro na hindi nakakasawa sa pag-uulit ng paksa. Ito baga'y pag-ibig! NGIYAW!"

-Paolo Manalo,  awtor ng  Happily Ever Ek-ek at Posthumous

In this groundbreaking collection, Aylli Cortez maps the uneasy work of becoming, where the body is at once question & guide. Blending raw confession with cultural pastiche & the surreal to explore self-discovery, body discomfort, & the search for belonging. Through vivid imagery & sharp, questioning turns, these poems evoke longing & the challenge of defining oneself amid competing expectations.

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Unabandon traces the body’s journey toward wholeness & recognition. These poems inhabit the charged space between self-discovery & the fraught dance of self-perception & visibility, rendered through the majestic somatic rituals of edifications. At its heart is the radical act of unabandoning the self—to return, to reclaim, to stay. Here, Tboy swag rises into the monumental labor of reshaping reality, navigating longing & precarious healing as the speaker confronts intimacy, risk, & the luminous horizon of transgender possibility—where “the sun proves actual” & “soon better will feel like a burning dream.”

—Michael Balili, author of Kaiju