Bosnian poet Selma Asotic’s fearless debut on memory and resistance
In a pocket, Asotic finds a brood of planets. In the wind, a cathedral of voice. And in the throat, a thorn bush hums. She slakes her thirst with briny water, and later, tucks a thorn under the tongue. Ready to speak. The poet’s voice is warm with questions, recursions, and doubts. “Do you remember nothing from your life?” she asks, observing the challenge of memory and family history in the wake of the Bosnian War. The poet recalls men returning from war, with bodies no bigger than marbles in a palm. A bullet may pierce through a door and become a peephole. Through it, Asotic can see the myths of war – that shrapnel makes men celestial – or fragments of her own mayhemmed matrilineage. Her lines, blossoming and chimeric, search for a home, and a mother, in peacetime. Her language is alchemized into the corporeal, illumining the bodies that touch and leave us, like waves washing away their gestures.
Author: Selma Asotic
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Archipelago Books
Published: 10/14/2025
Pages: 64
Weight: 0.25lbs
Size: 7.80h x 5.80w x 0.30d
ISBN: 9781962770439
Language: English
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.