Muted Blood

What lonely deposits do our memories leave, which remnants do our future selves steal for survival in the present? To read m nica teresa ortiz's MUTED BLOOD, we unwrap our depleted ear, we open space and breath for our unruly ones, we write letters into the future and underneath the surface with our dearly beloved poet ghosts. This is a poetry which defies demarcated boundaries, which demands deep listening and honoring of the dead, which celebrates our small sweet bursts of joy.--Ching-In Chen

ortiz' MUTED BLOOD pulses with both life and death. It is too simplistic to say that MUTED BLOOD is about Texas because within these pages ortiz maps out a border landscape both lush and harsh, full of secrets, history and mythology; it is here that that desert becomes its own universe. There is a sensuality to ortiz' words, but one never forgets that, 'There is nothing bucolic about being queer or brown in the US.' This is a book I will return to when I need to be reminded that there are poets writing for the exiled, for those who refuse to be helpless and those that will return.--Casandra L pez