For Want of Water
and other poems
Published on 17. October 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
136 pages
978-0-8070-2785-1 (ISBN)
Description
Searing verses set on the Mexican border about war and addiction, love and sexual violence, grief and loss, from an American Book Award–winning author. Selected by Gregory Pardlo as winner of the National Poetry Series.
El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States, while across the river, Ciudad Juárez suffers a history of femicides and a horrific drug war. Witnessing this, a Filipina’s life unravels as she tries to love an addict, the murders growing just a city—but the breadth of a country—away. This collection weaves the personal with recent history, the domestic with the tragic, asking how much “a body will hold,” reaching from the border to the poet’s own Philippines. These poems thirst in the desert, want for water, searching the brutal and tender territories between bodies, families, and nations.
El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States, while across the river, Ciudad Juárez suffers a history of femicides and a horrific drug war. Witnessing this, a Filipina’s life unravels as she tries to love an addict, the murders growing just a city—but the breadth of a country—away. This collection weaves the personal with recent history, the domestic with the tragic, asking how much “a body will hold,” reaching from the border to the poet’s own Philippines. These poems thirst in the desert, want for water, searching the brutal and tender territories between bodies, families, and nations.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Boston, MA
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 233 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
225 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8070-2785-1 (9780807027851)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
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E-Book
10/2017
Beacon Press
€15.49
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Content
Foreword by Gregory Pardlo
I
If I Die in Juárez
13 Ways of Knowing Her
Our First Year
My Father’s Family Fasts the Slaughter to Feast the Arrival of His Bride
The Kiss
Late September, When the Heat Releases
Meditations on Living in the Desert
Admit Impediments. Love Is Not Love
Continental Split
At a Party
II
Panic
Gedankenexperiments
A Loaf of Bread
After Dinner
The Eyes Open to a Cry
In Their Dark Habits
Kastanyas
How to Care for a Man, Withdrawing
In Step
Because “Some Women Are
Displaced Women’s Blues
You Say You Can’t Sleep
Thai Massage
Bodies, and Other Natural Disasters
For Want of Water
III
Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose
Autopsy:
How we come to smoke:
High, high, high:
Autopsy, Juárez:
Tale, two cities:
High and low:
Crack rock, a hard place:
Autopsy, us:
Drug war:
How we love to score / (buying glass pipes at the barrio store):
IV
Sea Change
At the Symphony: 7 Things I Wish I’d Told You
[ Rules for Behaving on an Airplane ] & Simultaneous Monologue on Your Separate Grief
Last Photograph of My Mother Laughing
When in Solitude, the Surprise of Morning
Leaving the University Gym
Tuesday Night in Montparnasse
Moment in Storm
Marking. Connecting: Between Going and Stopping,—
Old Beds and Hollywood
School Terrorist Exercise, 2005
V
What Is Broken
Before Dawn
We’re Really Not Okay
Golden Shovel: at the Lake’s Shore, I Sit with His Sister, Resting
Grave, ma non troppo tratto
Safely Watching a Solar Eclipse with Kuya
Orison
While My Lover Rests
Touched By Dusk, We Know Better Ourselves
Lines I’ve Stolen, and Other Notes
Credits and Acknowledgments
I
If I Die in Juárez
13 Ways of Knowing Her
Our First Year
My Father’s Family Fasts the Slaughter to Feast the Arrival of His Bride
The Kiss
Late September, When the Heat Releases
Meditations on Living in the Desert
Admit Impediments. Love Is Not Love
Continental Split
At a Party
II
Panic
Gedankenexperiments
A Loaf of Bread
After Dinner
The Eyes Open to a Cry
In Their Dark Habits
Kastanyas
How to Care for a Man, Withdrawing
In Step
Because “Some Women Are
Displaced Women’s Blues
You Say You Can’t Sleep
Thai Massage
Bodies, and Other Natural Disasters
For Want of Water
III
Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose
Autopsy:
How we come to smoke:
High, high, high:
Autopsy, Juárez:
Tale, two cities:
High and low:
Crack rock, a hard place:
Autopsy, us:
Drug war:
How we love to score / (buying glass pipes at the barrio store):
IV
Sea Change
At the Symphony: 7 Things I Wish I’d Told You
[ Rules for Behaving on an Airplane ] & Simultaneous Monologue on Your Separate Grief
Last Photograph of My Mother Laughing
When in Solitude, the Surprise of Morning
Leaving the University Gym
Tuesday Night in Montparnasse
Moment in Storm
Marking. Connecting: Between Going and Stopping,—
Old Beds and Hollywood
School Terrorist Exercise, 2005
V
What Is Broken
Before Dawn
We’re Really Not Okay
Golden Shovel: at the Lake’s Shore, I Sit with His Sister, Resting
Grave, ma non troppo tratto
Safely Watching a Solar Eclipse with Kuya
Orison
While My Lover Rests
Touched By Dusk, We Know Better Ourselves
Lines I’ve Stolen, and Other Notes
Credits and Acknowledgments