Santa Muerte, Santa Muerte: I was Here, Release Me

by Lauren Brazeal Garza

Poetry. A dark and fascinating exploration of the voices of the dead. These poems are imaginative and surprising in both form and content: Judy Garland is reincarnated as a mountain and the atomic bomb, "Little Boy," speaks as a Musk Thistle plant in pieces that eerily command the white space on the page, while other spirits, like that of a decomposing carousel horse, speak in sonnets.

Genres: Poetry

41 pages, Paperback

Published March 14, 2023

About the author

Lauren Brazeal Garza is the author of the full length collection Gutter (Yes Yes Books, 2018), a memoir-in-verse about her homelessness as a teenager; and has published three chapbooks of poetry, most recently, Santa Muerte, Santa Muerte: I Was Here, Release Me (Tram Editions, 2023), a series of fictional interviews with ghosts. Her poetry, lyric essays, and fiction have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Waxwing, and Verse Daily among many other journals. She currently teaches literature and creative writing at UT Dallas and Writing Workshops.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved Lauren's full-length collection Gutter, so I ordered this as soon as she shared it on her socials. I loved all of these poems, spoken in the voices of the dead and the medium who hears them. Sad and spooky, fragmented and spectral.

[Logen Cure · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is beautiful, surprising, and strange. I very much enjoyed it! A must-read for anyone who likes ghosts and the supernatural.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

A chapbook of poems told from the ghosts of people (Anna Nicole Smith) and things (a carousel horse) gone.

from Voice From the Decomposed Carousel (Waco, TX): "I imagine being snared from Prairie Smoke / & saddled with my sister; steel shoes burned / into our wooden feet. Our captors twisted / brass poles through our spines, bisecting our hearts."

from Interview With "Little Boy" (Reincarnated as a Musk Thistle Plant in Los Alamos, NM): "I'd barely graced this world before I / flamed out of existence / and carry no regrets I followed orders // and was proud to function / beautifully // —the Earth's splits // moan in remembrance of me"

from From the Journal of the EVP Transcriber: More Than This, You Know There's Nothing: "I've swapped your face for other faces, your mouth / for other lips, upcycled all my nicknames for you. // This is what survivors do: reuse all that's precious / till it breaks or is replaced by what we mend it with."