Azizi’s impressive debut collection combines careful observations of life’s mundane details with vivid expressions of the range of emotions they evoke. The 45 poems are arranged in three sections titled “before,” “before then,” and “after.” The author, a single mother, dedicates the book to her daughter as her muse and centers several poems around her—as a newborn, a severely ill toddler, a healthy teen, and a young adult. Nostalgia for Azizi’s own younger self is another recurring theme; in the poem “Single Mom Finally in Repose,” she observes other parents like she once was with their small children, wistful for the past while also celebrating the present: “I’d be over the moon to push / my chunky baby in a swing / again, but I feel lucky / enough where we’re at.” Women’s bodies and blood—objectified, nurturing, sensual, and powerful—are additional leitmotifs. “We Don’t Win for Losing” describes a litany of ways in which “this flesh I was taught to consider / revolting” can be damaged, but ends with a vow to “spread our legs, & take up space.” Other poems address sexuality (both straight and queer), sometimes with tender eroticism, as in “Silk,” and other times with frank depictions of sex work, as in “On the Job” and “Guy on the Left,” which asks, “What is the ratio of the dollar / to self-respect?” while rejecting “the prim experts … who claim / our choices are warning signs.” The arc of the collection as a whole is a woman’s journey from seeking others’ acceptance to celebrating her own complexity and reconciling conflicting desires for connection and autonomy. Azizi’s language is both matter-of-fact and evocative as she combines mundane imagery—dirty dishes, drinking coffee, walking the dog, “the sounds of cutlery & cracking joints”—with expressions of deep feeling. Rejecting the idea of poetic perfection, the author declares that poems should be “messy & glorious”; her poetry portrays a woman’s life full of disorder and delight, at once wondrous, ordinary, and precious.
