Stories from the City

The poets finds her language again within so that, from poem to poem, one encounters not language or text but a meaningfulness of living. - Gemino H. Abad ... a lovely book... [of a] cosmopolitan type of poetry... Some poems brought tears to my eyes. Others made me laugh. It's all there, the neon city outside [her] sliding door. And yes, the silence, too. - Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo Stories from the City is anything but urbane: these are brave and even cutting poems that do not balk at the idea of confronting racism. sexism, classicism, disbelief, loveliness, ennui, death, and all the other verities attending contemporary urban existence. But ultimately, this book celebrates living in the city of our collective childhood-glittering with dream, paved with simple and uncompromising need, bustling with games of precious kinship-the city buried under the jaded wakefulness we shall, after reading this astonishing first collection, barely be able to call life. - J. Neil C. Garcia, poe