A pomengranate
is opened like this:
gutted like a fish,
its entrails glow.
Spill out the millions
of seeds who crouch
and hurt like your mother—
Suck them dry
and your tongue
will grow small
as you learn to shrink
before children, waving your hands
before their glossy eyes.
This is the taste
of memory, sweet pluck of
death. Later, teach them
to eat as you have, the broken
fruit flesh of your own
body, its hard growths tart
in your mouth, nervous and rising.
— “Learning to Eat”
Passionate and sensuous, these poems address both the mind and body of the reader.
A verbal magician, a show-stopping performer, the author educates, stimulates and moves us, through her realization and empowerment of images.
Her love of family, familiarity with death, sexualization of everyday life, politics of liberation—these themes are transformed before our eyes into kindling and fed to a flame of such intensity as is rarely found in contemporary poetry.
“These are thoughtful, careful, urgent poems that explore what we take in, what we swallow and how we are swallowed in return.”
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Sasha Pimentel Chacón was born in Manila.
She is a recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize and was a featured reader at the San Francisco Poetry Fest in 2009.
Her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Colorado Review, and The Dos Passos Review.
She holds an MFA from California State University, Fresno, and teaches creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso.
This is her first book.
