Mouth Full of Seeds

With Mouth Full of Seeds Marcela Sulak writes a hybrid psalm to living, translating traumas and joys, the capaciousness of passion, and the stunning moments that take away the breath. From a divorce document folded into the shape of bird wings to an exposition on light, from Czech fairy tales to the cells in our bodies, she prisms the “cleanliness of laundry” and the “inherent bloodiness and destruction of love.” In a fairy tale, Mouth Full of Seeds would become a “God box,” an invention of Sulak’s daughter, who decrees: “whatever you put inside of it becomes part of God.”

—Amy Newman