My Daughter La Chola

My Daughter La Chola

2013
ISBN: 978-1934103425
Ahsahta Press

"My daughter," the text tells us, "my daughter": among crises economic and personal, the histories and documents of atrocities, the missing limbs and mummified ears, the Golden Girls and the construction and questioning of genders, Matuk makes it all a personal issue.

My Daughter La Chola Near Sonnet

call to me the one among your names
that opens beneath you intimate
as your next thought cymballing on the shore

arranging all those grains of sand
mica in the mosaic of the bank's portico
all your lived and storied coordinates
that you are young

that you are blank
in the air in the cluster of antenna
the remaining Barton men make of themselves riding back
the yellow fire hills of California

slip between understandings name
the single ridge of bell bronze that tins out the wind

Awards

  • Best books of 2013, selected by John Keene for The Volta

  • Best books of 2013, selected by Nick Twemlow for the Poetry Foundation

  • &Now Award, Innovative Writing

  • Honorable Mention, 2014 Arab American Book Awards

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