For Want of Water: And Other Poems

Searing verses set on the Mexican border about war and addiction, love and sexual violence, grief and loss, from an American Book Award-winning author. Selected by Gregory Pardlo as winner of the National Poetry Series.

El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States, while across the river, Ciudad Ju rez suffers a history of femicides and a horrific drug war. Witnessing this, a Filipina's life unravels as she tries to love an addict, the murders growing just a city--but the breadth of a country--away. This collection weaves the personal with recent history, the domestic with the tragic, asking how much "a body will hold," reaching from the border to the poet's own Philippines. These poems thirst in the desert, want for water, searching the brutal and tender territories between bodies, families, and nations.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 10/17/2017
ISBN: 9780807027851
Pages: 136
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 0.40d

Review Citations: Library Journal 07/01/2017
Publishers Weekly 09/18/2017