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nogardens's review
5.0
“Every not thing you occupy. / I grow a garden of holes gathering dust.”
“It wasn‘t quite graffiti, / but it would have to do.”
“The city was river was grave was ruin was monument was city again, less a bridge and neighborhood or two.”
& the entirety of titular poem and exhibition notes.
if dark hours was the existence of the city, (…)emergency is the insistence of the city—this is how u would imagine a city poem whilst in an fx ride to philcoa.
or its a there is no emergency 2024
“It wasn‘t quite graffiti, / but it would have to do.”
“The city was river was grave was ruin was monument was city again, less a bridge and neighborhood or two.”
& the entirety of titular poem and exhibition notes.
if dark hours was the existence of the city, (…)emergency is the insistence of the city—this is how u would imagine a city poem whilst in an fx ride to philcoa.
or its a there is no emergency 2024
zarvindale's review
5.0
Revisited as part of my Conchitina Cruz reading marathon. As I’ve said in my review of her sophomore collection, her lyricism fares better in prose than line cuts. She displays expertise in navigating the city, and in this book, she dares to go beyond by mentioning countries as sites of histories. She manages to rethink postcards by reducing them into descriptions, which form images that provably differ with every reader according to experience and knowledge. She remembers hyperspecific details of memories, and so as not to forget these memories, she writes them down and collects them in this book, as if they’re notes from an exhibition she attended. These memories as well as the overall format are arranged quite formally, but the narrative is meandering. And that’s the point! The connection among images is often interrupted throughout the sections and lyric sequences because the goal is not to be completely coherent, but to summon some sense of emotion, perhaps wistfulness, as we jump from one random yet relatable image to another.
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