Green of All Heads

by Aracelis Girmay

Written over the span of a decade, GREEN OF ALL HEADS is a work of formal range and emotional urgency. In the coinciding wakes of tragic loss and new motherhood, Aracelis Girmay examines the entangled temporalities of an aging parent and newly born children. This vital work grapples with what it means to attend to life in the context of corporate industries of birth and death. In language shaped by these pressures, she turns to what is small, unruly, nationless, plural — flowers, speech — to reach toward new relational and political possibility. Away from the fixed and monumental, and toward that which is fleeting, she writes: “— i am learning to lift — my voice — like a flower — in — a field of flowers —” The result is a language broken and emboldened by love.

Genres: Poetry

124 pages, Paperback

Published September 16, 2025

About the author

Aracelis Girmay is an American poet. Her poems trace the connections of transformation and loss across cities and bodies.

In 2011 Girmay was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A Cave Canem Fellow and an Acentos board member, she led youth and community writing workshops.

Reviews

[victoria marie]

Winner of the 2026 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection

Abandon à soi, aux saisons, à la lune, au jour plus
ou moins long. Cueillette. Et toujours et partout, dans
les moindres représentations, primat de la plante, la
plante piétinée mais vivace, morte, mais renaissante,
la plante libre...
—Suzanne Césaire, "Malaise d'une civilization"
Tropiques 5, April 1942

Children
You were never meant to be human
You must be the grass
You must grow wildly over the graves
—Roger Reeves, from "Children Listen"

*

You were a beautiful story grown out of the earth.
(36)

Close your eyes, close your eyes. It is not time to know.
(37)

*

ANSWERS TO YOUR DISAPPEARING QUESTION
yes, we will -- we have been trying -- for as long as you --
have been -- where -- in the air? -- do you suggest -- how will we --
know? -- mind -- the flowers -- mind -- where you step --
we suspect -- we are already -- walking right -- through

(45)

[Burgi Zenhaeusern · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a mirror becomes an "oval / throat of light," grief stones to push through the house, solace a communion with flies, a group of girls "a voltage," mother's milk her elusive privacy, you enter Girmay's world of we, of connectedness, of ever shifting simultaneity, of never alone. Her poems splice their silky strands to beautiful cords to hold on to, drop, and pick up again.

[Ally Ang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection unsettled me, which in this case is a compliment. The ambiguity between life and death echoed by the strange syntax and the collapsing of tense, of subjectivity…loved it.

[Rhiley Jade · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Edelweiss and BOA Editions LTD for the E-ARC! This E-ARC was sent to me in exchange for an honest review!

I personally could not relate to any of the poems in this collection and did not think they were particularly my cup of tea. Where I thought they could have been more original and better written, someone else might find them heart shattering. This was a small and generally okay collection but not something I will pick up again.

[atito · Rating 4 out of 5]

lovely collection on loss as generative disorientation--the process that makes you see beyond the curtain. girmay is unflinching when it comes to turning that phrase: "as mountain i have failed" or "the generations of its violet eyelet flowers on every street here, rosemary uncle" or "but really, she is placing the red words, one by one, / into the sumac, into the pomegranate for sleep there"

[Dylan Harbison · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You Are Who I Love" is one of my favorite poems now. It brought me to tears the first time I read it. Other favorites from this collection were December and Flowers. Great book, my first time reading her work.

[Nikita Ladd · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book, had to put it down because of the heart and weight that soared off the first few pages, and then came back to it when I was more ready. Lines like "death being death" are what keep me in poetry that total touch to the poet's mind when they reveal something totally obvious and true that turns the world for me on its head. When they break my heart with one line. Girmay is a master talent at that! Favorite poems were "gk" and "after Sin título (Sikán con chivo), Belkis Ayón."