Veering between past and present, between ecological destruction and human violence,ย What Comes Back is a search for what has vanished and what remains.ย
Javier Peรฑalosa M.โs What Comes Back is a procession, a journey, a search for a body of water that has disappeared or gone elsewhere. Featured in separate sections, original Spanish poems and Robin Myersโ English translations highlight tender ruminations on loss, memory, and communion. Just as landscapes witness and โpreserve what happens along the length of them,โ so do people. We watch as travelers navigate realms between the living and the dead, past mountains and dried up rivers to map, trace, and remember the past and future. Several sections, each bearing the title โWhat Comes Back,โ guide readers on a looping voyage where they are โorbited around the gravity of what had come to beโโthe absence of Mexico Cityโs rivers, and other absences wrought by war, climate change, and forced migration. Rattled between ecological destruction and human violence, What Comes Back, what remains, is a desire to name the missing, to render belonging out of dispossession, endurance out of erasureโthe spiritual urge toward connection and community.
