A review by helterskelliter
When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz
5.0
“A tongue will wrestle its mouth to death and lose —
language is a cemetery.”
This is a brutal, bony, bloody, raw, and gut-wrenching collection of some of the most poignant and visceral poetry I’ve read in a long time. Each poem is a battle, a bloody lip and a bruised jaw and a blackened eye. I feel wretched and weary after each poem, like I’ve gone twenty rounds in the ring and somehow lost twenty-one. There’s so much loss in this poetry, with relocation like amputation and addiction like a death sentence. I am wounded by these poems. I feel their pain like my own but also never like my own. They are filled with ghosts I will see, with scars from hurts I will never experience. And yet, I feel the sting beneath my skin, feel thorns in my bones.
I am hurt and I want more. I taste blood and it is warm, sweet.
language is a cemetery.”
This is a brutal, bony, bloody, raw, and gut-wrenching collection of some of the most poignant and visceral poetry I’ve read in a long time. Each poem is a battle, a bloody lip and a bruised jaw and a blackened eye. I feel wretched and weary after each poem, like I’ve gone twenty rounds in the ring and somehow lost twenty-one. There’s so much loss in this poetry, with relocation like amputation and addiction like a death sentence. I am wounded by these poems. I feel their pain like my own but also never like my own. They are filled with ghosts I will see, with scars from hurts I will never experience. And yet, I feel the sting beneath my skin, feel thorns in my bones.
I am hurt and I want more. I taste blood and it is warm, sweet.