Body of Render

Language is action in these poems, which are utterances of pleading, fighting, and mending in an America we can hardly stand to look at straight on. Body of Render is a book of saying what must be said: “say Capitol Hill be voice of all your people, be just; in haunt, you must be voice, must.” The risks Felicia Zamora takes with form, syntax, and breath pay off in poem after poem—and make Body of Render one of the most dynamic—most transformative—collections I’ve read in years.
—Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones

In 1917, NAACP organizer James Weldon Johnson wrote “To America,” a poem in which he asked, “How would you have us, as we are?//...Rising or falling?” And with the (unjust, Russian-influenced) election of 2016, one hundred years later we (migrants, people of color, women, queer, trans and non-binary folx, folx with disabilities, abuse survivors, and all who believe equity is true freedom) are still forced to fight for better answers than the ones America is giving. How grateful I am to hear Felicia Zamora’s heart and voice rising, reminding us that “alone is not us.” Here is a book that is part elegy, part ecstasy, part clapback, and all vision. How she zooms in on the microscopic wonder of cells only to zoom out to remind us what we are capable of. “oh / unanswerable molecule of you; oh inorganic beast; oh / organic beast; burn down, day day, then rise.” Thank you, Felicia, for lifting us (and yourself!) up with these prayer-poems. May this book usher in freedom—simple and mighty.
—TC Tolbert, author of Gephyromania