The consciousness in Allan Popa’s "Incision" insinuates itself into that moment between resolve and response, before decision becomes consequence. Using sentences distended to defer the finality of pronouncement, this consciousness pushes back and against the certainty of event to accommodate the undisclosed, further unsettle the shifting spheres of art and lived experience, and expose the twitching cells of a hurt until it no longer almost is what it is. Precise and yet, because exploratory and attentive, volatile: this consciousness cleaves to “what night is the shadow of”: the unbidden imperative to look and look into. These exorcisms of insatiable curiosity rivet; they also terrify.
–Mark Anthony Cayanan
