“The body is not a temple, but a cage,” is a thought that often intrudes when one is alone in the kitchen, staring at leftovers that have turned a shade too gray. It is a feeling of being trapped not by walls, but by biology itself. When did I start feeling it? Maybe it was when I first realized that grief is just a form of indigestion. Maybe it was reading Kagat (Bite) by Arcadian Moth, a text that seems to have been written on the back of a grocery receipt stained with meat juice. 

We begin with the stitching. Arcadian Moth, a self-described “Ukay Queen,” constructs a manifesto of “longing, confession, girlhood, and rage” with what she admits are “patchy sewing skills.” Born in Isulan, the author does not write in a polished, academic tongue, but does so in the vernacular of the breakdown. By stitching together English, Tagalog, and Hiligaynon into a garment that fits uncomfortably and tight, like her description of the disorientation of grief which she calls “bayo sang grief.” The writing is not smooth, but jagged, like a hem that has been taken up and let down too many times.

The collection opens by demanding this violence be turned inward. The fabric of the text changes from cotton to flesh in a terrifying invitation to cannibalism. It recalls the feverish eroticism of early Anaïs Nin, but acts primarily as a confrontation with the “abject” as defined by Julia Kristeva. In Powers of Horror, Kristeva posits that the abject is everything that disrupts the “identity, system, order” of the self bodily fluids, decay, the open wound. It is the terrifying realization that the boundary between the “I” (the subject) and the world (the object) is porous; it is the moment meaning collapses because the distinction between self and other has been obliterated. Kagat enacts this collapse not through light, but through digestion. Moth commands:

suotin mo ang aking balat

dahan-dahan mong itarak ang pangil
sa bawat hibla ng aking laman
at bawat balot ng pagkatao
sipsipin ang anumang rumaragasa
may kusa at pagnanasa

lunukin mo ako

We see this aesthetic of rot extend to the sacred on the author’s construction of an “altar.” But instead of saints or incense, the altar holds pakwan (watermelon), upo (gourd), and luy-a (ginger). It is a shrine to the mundane, until it isn’t. In a moment of stylistic brutality, this still life is destroyed: the items are gindunggaban (stabbed), ginlamutak (mangled), and ginlanlan (devoured). The specificity of these verbs matters because they transform a kitchen table into a crime scene, proving that in Moth’s world, even the vegetables are not safe from the violence of consumption. The altar, usually a space of preservation and worship, becomes a chopping block, suggesting that in the domestic sphere, love and violence are often carved with the same knife.

The consumption moves from the preparation to the gut, utilizing a staccato rhythm to map the decay of the spirit. In “Pizza Topping: Kasubo,” the syntax itself seems to suffer from indigestion. The description of leftovers is punched out in short, heavy beats: “Ganit. Bugnaw. Las-ay.” (Tough. Cold. Bland.). The imagery is relentlessly unappetizing through worms, teeth, and intestines that float in water or tangle in knots throughout the zine’s visual language. The “mold and rust” fighting on the stove mirror the internal decay of a self that has been left behind.

This surrender to the flesh quickly sours into resentment against the biological imperative. In the searing prose piece regarding the “pusang ina” (mother cat), Moth deconstructs the maternal instinct, stripping it of its sanctity. The text creates a claustrophobic vision of reproduction where the offspring are not gifts, but “parasitong pipiga ng lalamunan” (parasites that will wring the throat). It is a rage against the physiological burdens placed solely on the female body, framing motherhood as a violent entrapment where one is “iyot na iyot” (fucked over and over) by circumstance. The cat, acting on the “tawag ng laman” (call of the flesh), is betrayed by her own biology, forced to nurture the very things that consume her resource. It paints the womb not as a cradle, but as a factory you can never clock out of.

This is where Kagat diverges sharply from the shallow waters of mainstream feminist literature. Where the “girlboss” narrative seeks to sanitize the female experience into something palatable and empowered. There is no attempt to rebrand the body as a temple or a site of endless choice; instead, the text insists on the body as a site of glorious, reeking decay. The persona rejects the aesthetic of purity, creating a manifesto of “funk” that feels radically honest:

i don’t care walking around
without underwear on.

no chemicals can bleach my hyperpigmentations.

no chemicals can grow
garden of flowers on my vulva.
no chemicals can alter my smell.

By reclaiming the smell of “toenail clippings” and “sweat collector bra[s],” Moth politicizes the gross. It is a rejection of the “chemicals” that society sells to women to correct their natural state. To refuse to bleach one’s hyperpigmentation or scent one’s vulva like a garden is to refuse the commercialization of the body. It is an assertion that the body exists for its own function, however smelly or dark, and not for the aesthetic consumption of others.

The work concludes not with healing, but with a desire for erasure. The author admits they “will probably hate this zine too,” by requesting to be buried “10ft deep underground” under thick cement, not to hide, but to ensure the dead stay dead, safe from the “menstruation cramps” of the living. The persona asks if it is an achievement to have acquired “full immunity sa different brands ng mefenamic acid,” suggesting a pain so chronic it has outpaced the cure. 

Reading this, I felt a phantom cramp in my own gut, pointing to a recognition of that specific, cyclical betrayal. It is the exhaustion of womanhood distilled, through the realization that the maintenance of the body has become a job from which we cannot retire.

When the medicine no longer works, the only relief is cessation. Kagat is a difficult swallow, a literary bolus that refuses to go down. It leaves the reader standing back in the kitchen where we began, clutching that receipt stained with meat juice. This is a receipt for the cost of occupying a female body— that even if the cage cannot be broken out of, it can at least be documented. (Alyssa Ilaguison/MindaNews)

This review is part of Mindanews’ literary feature on SOX Zine Fest 2025, focusing on select zines highlighted from the event on November 29, 2025, at Notre Dame of Marbel University, Koronadal City, South Cotabato.