Of Form & Gather

Felicia Zamora

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780268101787
• eBook ISBN: 9780268101800
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Of Form & Gather marks the dazzling debut of Felicia Zamora, whose poems concern themselves with probing questions, not facile answers. Where does the self reside? What forms do we, as human beings, inhabit as we experience the world around us? Echoing the collection's provocative title, final judge Edwin Torres writes: "Zamora has crafted a work that celebrates form as human evolution—the poem's breath, the poet's body—passing over time in a landscape thirsty for passage." Privileging journey over destination, Zamora's poems spur the reader to immerse herself in linguistic soundscapes where the physicality of the poems themselves is, in no small part, the point: poems that challenge us to navigate the word/world as both humans and things. Edwin Torres continues: "This is quietly revolutionary work. . . . A living palimpsest to newly awaken our social engagement." With the publication of this volume, the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, now in its seventh edition, emphatically makes good on its aim to nurture the various paths that Latino/a poetry is taking in the twenty-first century.

To be out of—dually other

Decoy

I am the ocean bottom; my craters full of bioluminescence

twinkling in heavy, heavy dark. Who speaks of the float circling

inside them? Cut open a creature; what do you expect? A line of

labels & a thing exposed; think clever me, let’s slice an eel, pare down

parts, see how we mean. Now you, eel under knife. Now me. Hold

the blade, away from anything that tears, cull the power of light,

of adaptation, the fish in heavy wet with a glowing lure on its

head; that’s something. Do you need to collect all parts to be

something? When first you swim, flesh remembers amniotic

everything; you on the other hand, ignore the innate sense of

fluidity. When I say you I mean I; a little I/Thou never hurt as

long as you fasten other’s oxygen mask first; I am a giant tube

worm, plume scarlet; think hemoglobin; think what carries in presence

of sulfide; think insides I wear out; & you consider float; the decoy

made of bob & shine & teeth & fins & & &

Physics of where we stand

You draw a line; the top of the aspen

resembles a pitchfork, leaves quaking

green fire & we all contemplate death

separately; internal

dialogue rolls ticker-taping the mind out

& hibernation is less lifestyle choice than

instinct. You bring yourself to the wide

open page & the page bullies you back. The

line never empties, only

a string of lights & colors bouncing off each other;

inertia inertia; in wait for the act upon;

matter: always seeing demons in the trees.

I long to be your property of force; to

reference nothing political; you turn

from me divided: face half shadow, half.

No Fisher

So you’re a fisherman? Strange phrases from strangers. You by the

lake with a box. The thought of tackle; of hoist & lower, this

system in levers. What you didn’t catch, releases you. What you

did catch, releases you; always a thing baiting for. So many

forewarnings in retrospect. The whale in the sand does not

resemble the whale in your mind. To be out of; two-realms;

dually other. The whale in your mind spins on axes, out of water,

3-D, fully puffed & bloated to full whaleness. Your mind knows

full whaleness requires water, salt, & depth—yet disobeys; your

mind knows not all the anatomical parts, yet knows what is not

whale. Your heart: a whale on land, sunken, containing the vision

you knew of it, boxed & discombobulated. The sun’s quiet chap

on your lips, just so, to remind. Ubiquity culls at the bones. &

this is not the ocean. So many forewarnings. & you, no fisher

here. What you bring before all bodies of: questions & a box.

Drift

Attend to the cranial side of your ear drum,

who speaks to who? Voice in the box; utters

behind; space thickens & mind becomes

becomes becomes—then

fleck in distance; failing capture; you drift

restless vertebrae, flesh in elongation,

witness sun pull the blanket of twilight over

head & give night one last gaze. Sweet

gesture in repeat; repeat

this moment & that moment linger under each

lid wipes the eye, wipes the eye; all swept in

conversation. Of body & landscape, speak

of keepers, roll the e’s in your jaw. Taste keep

in capture, how place dwells inside.

& wings made of matchsticks

Interrupt, mid-flap. Erase ablaze, once fire

catches. No red-tipped heads left to

count; all singe; all dust. What’s left to

cremate when the spirit hollows in fall? You

trace the stony bone that refuses to burn.

Only the sun’s magnetic love harvests

elements sewn deep in grooves of your

molars. You taste flight in porous regions,

hidden from spark & flame—rhythm

etches in undersides, in absence: this ash

of heart thinks to re-beat & we’re all

convective motion, in sprawl … in sprawl.

Before caught; before your lips devour

only light: an elm sapling sprouts from

your ribs & you almost postpone flight.

Roots tempt you, graze your soft tissues

& whisper seeds in your wrists & ankles.

To lade you in the wet; make womb of

dark spaces; promise—Do you believe in

mostly hydroge...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to the Poems
• Circles & circulations
• That that that; this this this
• In in; gather gather
• To be out of—dually other