How Long She'll Last in This World

by Maria Melendez Kelson

Let go your keys, let go your gun, let go your good pen and your rings, let your wolf mask go and kiss goodbye your goddess figurine.

With this invocation, María Meléndez beckons us on a journey—an exotic expedition through life’s mysteries in search of the finer strands of experience. In a Latina voice laced with a naturalist’s sense of wonder, she weaves bold images reflecting a world threaded by unseen wounds, now laid before us with an unflinching love of life and an exquisite precision of language. Adopting multiple guises—field researcher, laboring mother, grief-stricken lover—Meléndez casts aside stereotypes and expectations to forge a new language steeped in life and landscape. Whether meditating on a controlled prairie burn or contemplating the turquoise cheek of a fathead minnow, she weaves words and memories into a rich tapestry that resonates with sensual detail and magnifies her sense of maternal wildness, urging us to “Love as much as you / can, don’t throw your heart / away to just one god.” In her paean to the Aztec deity Tonacacihuatl, mother of the gods, Meléndez muses that “How many spirits she’s twin to, and how long she’ll last in this world, / are secrets stashed in the rattle / of corn ears, in the coils / of venomous snakes.”

Through stunning images and stark realism, her poems embrace motherhood and vocation, love and grief, land and life, to bring new meaning to the natural world and how we experience it.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2006

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, gorgeous poetry that illuminates Darwin, the Southwest, and birth. Very accessible, if you don't usually read poetry. My brother read her "Good News for Humans" at our wedding.

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first time I read this book of poetry was in 2013 (give or take a year) in a literature class during my undergraduate time at Emerson College in Boston.

These poems, and their deep-rooted connection to the people and places of the Mountain West -- they moved me, made me feel longing, made me feel the frost of mountain snow, the chirps of prairie critters, the dank smell of a small town bar in rural California.

These poems marvel at the bloody beauty of birth, the tragedy of being human and its imminent termination in death. I love these words and they make me love every part of being alive, even the painful parts.

I'll never forget the opening lines to "Buckrail," a five-part poem about Matthew Shepard's murder: "-rise, strong as a buffalo, from the slumping body/ tied eighteen hours to a buckrail fence-"

[Juliana · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent