I don’t often read chapbooks.

Not because I dislike them, but because I usually just don’t have access to them. During the week of AWP, I ended up purchasing some chapbooks from Bull City Press, and this was one of them. I bought it because I’m increasingly obsessed with sonnets as a form of poetic expression, and the title of this chapbook was simply too interesting to pass up. I figured the poems would be good, that I would have a nice, short read for a week, and that I would walk away feeling good about the purchase.

I was not prepared, in any way, for the absolute mind-shattering quality of these sonnets.

I intended to read this collection slowly over the course of a week. I ended up reading the whole thing in a single night. I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t put the book down. I was underlining and writing down quotes nonstop. The writing in these poems, the use of language and imagery to capture themes of family, place, heritage, and loss astounded me.

“This is my box of twilight and inside / flickers everything” (page 5).

“When I remember you I remember / the animal we built out of stray bones / from the riverbed” (page 12).

And then this quote which made me absolutely melt: “The underside of logic / is still the softest place to be barefoot. / I walked it once. I didn’t want to leave” (page 15).

And this one: “Even a whisper can bruise” (page 27).

Chapbooks are usually no more than 30-35 pages long, and I found myself increasingly heartbroken that this book of poems didn’t go on for another 35 pages, at least. There was such a reverence woven into these sonnets, such a sense of the sacred in every day experiences, that it was like I couldn’t ever catch my breath. I was in a particularly hungry emotional and creative space that week, unable to get enough of the books I was reading, and so I think I was primed to encounter this book. I’m so incredibly glad I bought it.

I honestly can’t tell you enough to buy this book and read it. I look forward to when Salazar’s next book of poems comes out.