“I think of this book as a book of invocations. A shimmering history of histories. A wail in a chorus of wailing and a prayer in a chorus of prayers where time is pleated and beloved people and places who have passed into death are ‘alive, there, through the aperture of grief.’ This book is a prayer for time to ‘settle an aloe on mother’s heart.’ Such poems thrum with the brilliant, meditative attention of someone who learns from every thing. See: ‘Lend me, gazelle, your fleet hooves […] / I seek the Field of Reeds, the blue lotus. / Bring the cobra. I do not fear him.’ There is such deep intelligence, tenderness, and courage everywhere here.”—Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria
