There is pain, even in relief: A review of Therese Estacion’s Phantompains

The back cover of Therese Estacion’s Phantompains notes that she wrote her debut collection “out of necessity” after being hospitalized for a rare bacterial infection, resulting in the loss of “both of her legs below the knees, several fingers, and reproductive organs.” Her poems, in their frankness, refuse to let the reader settle, all while incorporating Filipino tales of the supernatural and the Visayan language. The result is a debut collection that provocatively explores disability, trauma, and familial and intimate relationships as a disabled, diasporic person.

[Estacion's] poems, in their frankness, refuse to let the reader settle.

Although the collection is officially divided into five sections, an untitled lyric poem, signalled only by an asterisk, serves as a prelude to the rest of the book. Set in a hospital, the poem immediately acknowledges herself as a subject—“Once upon a time the spectacle”—in more ways than one, as the speaker recalls this experience in a distant, yet very self-conscious tone. What starts out as a dense poem slowly becomes fragmented, a raw and visceral display of disembodiment: “my body belonging to my body for years / go into— / trash in a trash can—”. Estacion ends this strong opening poem by striking through feet, ankles, fingers, and uterus, each of these body parts in a single line, then reiterating that they “all go into their fucking garbage can.” 

Reading Visayan in this book was a joy to witness, especially as it’s deployed in the speaker’s surreal and dream-like encounters with the Agta in the eponymous section. While the Visayan and English phrases are structured parallel to each other, Visayan takes precedence over English. This figuration allows for a pause to happen, allowing suspense to simmer, as displayed in “Aswang”—“Pag lakaw na nimo, When you leave, that’s when she gets you. / Hunt. Swoop. Crunch and Glug.” Estacion manages to fluidly switch between these languages, especially in “Duwende:” “They usually live sa gamay na bontod, og sa / sud, ug sa luyo sa.” This fluidity evokes a very conversational, tsismis-like tone, as seen in “Tianak,” where the speaker talks about the titular monster: 

                “Iyahang change, mas pas pas gyud sya sa kidlat!
His change is faster than lightning!      Mu budlat iyahang mata
og mo dako iyang pupils…        His eyes enlarge and
pupils widen parihas gyud ud ka dako sa meaty tamarind seed
to the same size as a meaty tamarind seed Dayon, Then
the tianak will thrust its fangs into your neck ug kanun gyud ka
niya! and he’d fucking eat you!”

What’s particularly powerful about Estacion’s portrayal of these creatures in her poetry is how grounded they are in the community—these folk tales are passed down by family members and friends: “We used to swap stories of various White Lady sightings while / sitting on the grass waiting for the recess bell to ring.” Going beyond typical folk narratives that paint these creatures as grotesque and malevolent, Estacion instead turns these monsters into sympathetic characters who offer her protection (“I swear I saw something like an agta    at the foot of my / hospital bed    a form with no eyes / He said to all the devils that came / Ayaw Pag Ari Do not come here / Ayaw Pag Hilabot Do not touch”), empathy (“[She] lies down beside me and cries [...] She / weeps because she can see our dead uterus lying sadly on a / pillow”), as well as aspiration (“I wish / to be like her, / the whore butcher with a swinging rectum”). 

Going beyond typical folk narratives that paint these creatures as grotesque and malevolent, Estacion instead turns these monsters into sympathetic characters who offer her protection and empathy.

Instead, the real horror in this collection lies in Estacion’s recovery from her trauma, and navigating an ableist medical system that strips her of her control and agency. In EF II (an abbreviation of the section’s title, Eunuched Female), the speaker erupts after the hospital staff innocuously and continually refer to her stumps, which is also visually highlighted on the page: “Eunuched Female wants to / scream      STOP fucking CALLING THEM THAT.” Using bolded text is one of the many clever ways Estacion uses style to draw readers further into her poetry. While the speaker attempts to “be rehab hospital’s / favourite little disabled darling,” she subverts this desire for objectification by referring to the subject of “The ABG (Able-Bodied Gaze)” as an “it” that keeps following her around and invalidates her thinking that is the case: “It pretends I’m inconsequential that I am / being paranoid It was just minding its own business all along.” The speaker further diminishes the subject’s power by italicing them on the page.

Estacion deftly weaves religion into the collection with her straightforward tone and matter-of-fact language, while also showing a great aural intuition. How she starts the poem “Lady of Sorrows” with the line “Lady de la Rosa, black cloak caked crackled skin” reminds me of how Roman Catholic devotees would pray to saints for intercession; the speaker later calls on “Jesus Christ, [...] Mother of Mercy, Mother of Perpetual Help,” as if amplifying this prayer. In “Tito Joey,” a poem that reflects on the speaker’s relationship with the titular character at his wake, a chorus of Hail Marys “clicking against each other like a busy / staple gun” occupies the last third of the poem, with each repetition of the phrase “full of grace” becoming more urgent. Estacion takes these references a step further in lines that call to mind Jesus’ crucifixion in “Report on Phantompains:” “For 3 days my ankles felt like they were / being nailed to a cross, even though they / were already gone.” 

But there is pain, even in relief—and that may never go away.

What anchors Phantompains is its honesty. Just as grief is not linear, so too is recovery from a major health trauma. The poems are sharp and unflinching in their expansive provocations of lived experience in relation to disability and loss, and through them afford a sense of relief. But there is pain, even in relief—and that may never go away. All one can do is keep going, as Estacion does in eulogizing her feet, fingers, and uterus: “All I can offer is a memory / they were full / they were ecstatic / & in flux.”