Tectonic Tongues/Lenguas Tetonicas

Feminist in its foundation and in the star-filled firmament it paints, Stephanie Sherman’s Tectonic Tongues shapes words into blazing flowers “that shake thunder under a world built on [our] supposed silence.” Stephanie reminds us we can say NO to oppression with our lips painted red, because “Eve’s skeleton never needed foreign filaments…her skin curving comfortably around the wholeness of her contents.” And so too, we. These poems awaken and anoint the reader with the claws and wings needed to soar safely in a jagged world.

—Susana Praver-Pérez