Hush Harbor

by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

Katigbak-Lacuesta’s work investigates the fraught love and power dynamics between men and women, colonizer and colonized, as well as the contradictions of the feminine path in both ancient and modern literary plots. Shot through with violence and passion, sap and desire, these poems explore both loss and the price of belonging. They make their own captivating music, dirge and praise, internal rhyme, and surprising turns of phrase. “Love, come in, sit down, I’m open for business,” writes Lacuesta. What a pleasure to take her up on this invitation.

Genres: Poetry

92 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta hails from Manila and holds an MFA from the New School University in NYC. Her first book of poetry, The Proxy Eros, was published in 2008 by Anvil Publishing Inc., the foremost publishing house in the Philippines. Her work has been published in The New York Quarterly and will appear in the forthcoming issue of Defunct, an online literary magazine. She has also received Palanca and Philippines Free Press awards, the top literary honors in the Philippines.

Reviews

[michi · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do I talk about this book without being overly annoyed by that one John Garcia Villa-esque poem in the last section of this collection? Anyway I’ll probably write my actual thoughts on this book later and maybe through a reread but honestly I think I just want to keep a few lines of verse that I actually and genuinely loved in this collection and pass the book to someone else. IDK. Maybe I would like this more if I wasn’t so unimpressed by her interview of Lang Leav, who I do not like (as a writer) at all, which probably says something about Katigbak-Lacuesta.

[Aloysiusi Lionel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sigh of momentary awe, if there is such an expression, encapsulates my adoration for this book of a gem. Where brilliance of the verse slips between words. Where geometry of desire, bafflement and pain shows off its cuts and edges. Whether it explores Amorsolo portraits or reimagines Bulosan's America Is In The Heart, (given her command of aesthetics and art criticism),Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta's beautiful language enough to console me at my weakest and loneliest points will never lose charm and force. After reading this, I appreciated how flora and fauna---through an introspective, unsurprisingly cosmopolitan eye---could serve as springboard for a mystical kind of lyricism (I don't care anymore about my phraseology) which leads to a remarkable poem. There also sprung the idea that this series of collections is a Song, introduced by the guitar blues, sustained by the arpeggio, and culminated by the gospel cadences of hush and murmur. And in this oneness have I found a possibility: even in the ulteriority and complexity of poetry, the reader can achieve the highest degree of understanding. In his own world. In his own vanity.

[Corin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Landscape
Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta

In love, the landscape changes. Bridges are half-
way points. No one knows where they begin or end.

The sun cuts through a mesh of beams
And suddenly, one walks into light as one might

Walk into perfume; knows the exact moment
Likac bleeds into orange, and after that, musk.

Language finds its tongue in want, and there are
Many words for absence: acute, wild, and night

Perpetual. But when we speak of the end of love,
We might as well speak of the end of language,

The way specialists tell of a dying English: words
So quickly on the move, their meanings change.

Dirty for one, and then arcane.
What survives are words so old, we speak them now

As in ancient lore: one and two, and later, four.
Staying words every clock keeps, at any time.

No one but the lover knows the oldest words are
The first to go: I, for one, and the brevity of you,

In an arcane bar, the words dirty with longing.

[Zymon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lately it takes me an hour to finish a poetry collection of 100 pages and less. With this one, I took my sweet time to reread and digest each poem and each section. Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta’s residency in Iowa in 2015 must’ve refined the way she writes. Her poems here are much clearer than those that appear on her previous collections. The lines are more connected, and the poems in general look amusing, as always, on the pages. She has managed to stick to one theme this time too. Her love poems are informed by strong emotions as well as bourgeois art. She takes on visual cues, with the paintings and colors, as much as she mentions auditory effects, such as an arpeggio and a hush. Lonely poems gather and find port in this book, which also acts as a harbor for lucidity.

[Raven · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel loved

[Patty Enrado · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really gorgeous poems, and within the phrases, turn of language, vividness of language. I enjoyed these poems very much.

[Graciella · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
"And should a tender thought now leap
into you, and who it is you leave awake, forget love
in the throes of uncomplicated sleep."
— Love in the Time of the Sleep-together Shop

[Charmm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before "It's not living if it's not with you," there was "Dear I don't live at all when I'm not with you."

[p]

[read: june 2021]

[june · Rating 3 out of 5]

06/23/23:

3.5

*ampersand series version

05/22/25:

3

"Where a knife cuts my hand. / They come off easy; I loved you hard"

[Danna Peña]

"Today, as it was all these years ago, it is still there. Whatever it is
I have no words for, in mine or in any English."