Phantom Tongue

Written with vibrant detail and surgically precise word choice, the poems in the collection navigate through the construction of a person's identity by various experiences and circumstances. Some poems are about the narrator's Mexican heritage and the confliction of not being able to understand the language of his parents and relatives. Others show the struggle to come to terms with sexuality in the context of heritage and religion and the expectations of male gender roles. And others interact with the larger societal struggles looming around the narrator's struggle, such as a poem about the Orlando nightclub shooting. Phantom Tongue presents the danger of love, the bittersweet beauty of loss, and the power of human striving, often encapsulated by some form of expression--artistic, linguistic, romantic, or otherwise.

• Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within
• Refuse: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)
• Her Body and Other Parties: Stories
• Ordinary Beast: Poems
• Calling a Wolf a Wolf
• Mean
• I Have to Go Back to 1994 and Kill a Girl: Poems (Kathryn a. Morton Prize in Poetry)
• Naming The No-Name Woman
• Alternative Medicine
• I Can't Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (Pitt Poetry Series)