The mother tongue is the language of our earliest and truest selves, our first grip on the world around us as we learn to name the people, places, and things which hold us steady, which keep us fixed in a particular place and time.

“Until these collections, I didn’t believe you could write short pieces so clearly inspired by Chicano life.”

“ships of rats to the farthest parts of the world. Here / if you empty a space, something will live in it.”

“One of us remembers the honeyed ink / in the waiting womb…”

“I’d hear this man’s footsteps above me when in bed, trying to trap the sound of his feet with my eyes…”

“for her daughters to release her / into the river of her choosing”