Write Bloody Books

92 pgs/$15

On the back cover of Lauren Zuniga’s The Smell of Good Mud, poet Andrea Gibson writes, “Dear Lauren, it is impossible to read your book without falling in love with you.” I say, too late. I fell in love with Lauren Zuniga before I read her book. I fell in love with Lauren Zuniga in a small theater in downtown Scranton two weeks ago. I fell in love with Lauren Zuniga when she opened her mouth to read and her whole life fell out. We learned about her home, her children, her childhood, her loss, her love, and everything in between. This poet is so intimate with her audience, I almost want to set her a place at my Christmas Eve dinner.

So when I opened The Smell of Good Mud, I half-suspected I would love the words between the covers, and Zuniga did not disappoint. The strength in Zuniga’s work is her hard-fought language. She makes puzzles from words, scrambled eggs with social norms. Her images kaleidoscope across the page and spring to life over and over again like an eternal fountain of nouns and verbs. In “Dear Lemon Engine,” she paints the physicality of her grandmother:

My grandmother’s hands don’t work anymore. They are twisted seashells. She keeps every ex-husband on her back. Secretaries. Stillborn babies. Dried up milk. Keeps them in the floppy pockets of her nightgown. Let’s them gnaw on her bones. I don’t want to be crippled.

In “Gas Station Vodka,” she surprises with language again:

We will need a room full of compasses and stopwatches. Otherwise, we will have no idea where we are or how long we’ve been there. We will say Thanks every time we leave the bathroom. We will drink, gossip, and curl lips like old people who don’t give a damn about anything because they are old. But we won’t ever get old. We will get artistic. We will get Grand Canyon and shoreline. Continue reading →