"Giménez Smith seeks release from the pressures of societal expectations in this collection of brief yet powerful poems. … Giménez Smith’s crisp lyrics and imagery highlight ever-present threats to female personhood and autonomy."— " is one of those rare books, rare pieces of art, that manages to be extremely intimate, vulnerable and close while also doing a kind of searing cultural critique. The poems can be tender or ironic, and sometimes a blending of the two, which is not easy."— "In the body, through the lyric, and twitching with every sense of the word 'nerve,' this book sings a mongrel nation into and across its cruel futures. Like Neruda in his , Giménez Smith has all the mastery she needs to cast a cold eye on her positioning, and ours. In this way is an autobiography that won't stay in its genre or premise, caring less to author a self than to follow turns of magic in words that might soothe our 'collisions with the living.'"— "Declamatory anthems to no nation, these songs stride as they deal and wheel with skin and kin: history, catastrophe, the body, love. 'Upturned and defiant, all types of shade, no outskirt, / vital like a saint,' the poems in shimmer with Giménez Smith’s lyric attention: full of grit, sharp and knowing."—