A gorgeous collection about women, creation, love, pain, myth...the realities we create and the nature of memory. The language is often direct and frank, other times fantastical and imbued with whimsy. Sometimes these poems are funny and sometimes they hurt. A vivid, relatable work.

finished this a while ago but forgot to mark it because i am an idiot who doesn't know how to use goodreads~~~~


carmen did it again! fuck me up cgs!!!!!!!! is carmen giménez smith quickly becoming one of my favorite poets? yup! should she be y'alls? probably! is anyone reading these? hard no!

noteworthy poems:
why i left
translation
the drive home (this one fucked me up!!! as a mother with a young child omg carmen wtf) ("my son is my newest nerve/too small to speak, mouthpiece for death.")

carmen writes about motherhood, marriage, generational trauma, domesticity, heartbreak, and like the disillusionment that often accompanies things that are typically thought of as good/ideal, but again! she looks at those pesky contradictions between the dichotomies of mother and artist or mother and lover or mother and wife or mother and woman who is more than mother and wife but somehow reduced but also HOW DO U HANDLE THIS REDUCTION WHEN ITS ALSO kIND OF WHAT U WANT ?!

i have more to say but my keyboard pounding is waking up the toddler and scaring the cat

c ya