@deserthorror: my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store, by john compton is, among other things, a clear-eyed examination of the body, its hungers, desires, shames, and pains. It's a book of desires fulfilled, thwarted, and manipulated. The poems explore "my body," "his body," "your body," and "her stone body." Bodies that are "mercy," "burning," "rakish," and "dampened." They are manuscripts in which life is engraved, or poems spilled out of autopsy with stories that "carved poetry into my back." There are "dirty boys" and "sadistic cum stains." For compton, sex is both burden and gift, its fluids and actions work like spells that transform the speakers' wounds into incantations of survival. A "new body . . . instead of stretch marks, / . . . has a multitude of hieroglyphics / scratched across its walls." In love with the language his body has held and both born and borne, compton's poems resonate with a deep pulse of the indomitable life force of a survivor: "the naked body a rosary / bead tucked in each wound." A fourteen-year-old boy sits in the darkness of the Holiday Theater watching GIANT, the 1956 Warner Brothers extravaganza starring Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor. The film depicts the rise of newly rich oil barons as they replaced and came into conflict with the old cattle aristocracy. And yet the movie also teems with characters that depict racist stereotypes of Mexicans. One scene, this memory, is at the heart of Scene from the Movie GIANT, a remarkable book-length poem in five parts by Tino Villanueva. Villanueva excavates the meaning of this scene and in doing so grapples with urgent questions of cultural identity. Haunt Me is the 2025 Rattle Poetry Chapbook prize winner. It is some of the best #poetry I’ve read this year. I can’t recommend it more highly. #poetry #labordaysale #weekendreading #poems

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