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Hands that Break and Scar
In language that is both achingly honest and meticulously poetic, Chavez chronicles the passage from childhood to young womanhood in California's Central Valley, negotiating culture, language, identity, sexuality, love, and meaning. It is not that these poems reveal the secret profound nature of things—in Chavez' world, the lines blur between violence and love, joy and struggle, memory and transcendence, the sacred and the mundane. One thing flows into another and back again. Hands That Break & Scar will leave an indelible mark on your heart, reminding you that poetry, beauty, and life are everywhere—within and without.
—ire'ne lara silva, author of Blood Sugar Canto
The poems in Hands That Break and Scar work as a sort of mosaic, vividly portraying a bi-cultural, working class—and often precarious— childhood in the rough world of California’s hot Central Valley. This community is as stressed as it is vital—and children become vigilant and self-sufficient at an early age. In one poem, two children lay down together between the short walls they’ve built with their own hands from dumpster bricks, where they “gazed at the stars, held hands, and felt at home.” In another, the speaker tells us that a tattoo artist’s hands “are the only things I think about, the only things I can picture.” "I long for the heat she’ll create,” she writes—"this tattoo proof that she touched me.” For this poet, human hands can be the source of both pain and salvation, and Chavez celebrates the moments of true joy and grace to be found in simple physical acts and otherwise ordinary situations. “I climbed the ladder,” she says, “reached out my arm/ placed my fingers on the fruit’s smooth skin,/ twisted it away from the stem/ and handed it down to my grandmother/ whose hair danced lightly in the breeze.” This is a stunning first book, filled with brilliant images, hard truths, and honest hope.
—Corrinne Clegg Hales, author of To Make it Right
Each word, each line in Hands That Break and Scar draws the reader into a trail of well-crafted poems with touching and tragicomic narratives. In poems such as the aptly titled, "Running Into Things,", Chavez uses an ironic but effective tone to describe an uncle's drunk driving accident: "it would only take a couple / hundred bucks to fill the hole." Likewise, other poems, from "Thirteen and Catholic," and "Neighborhood Watch," approach sensitive subjects in similar manner. The result is a collection that is not afraid to show the poet's sizable scars, even as it treats them at times like they were minor bruises.
—José B. González, author of Toys Made of Rock
—ire'ne lara silva, author of Blood Sugar Canto
The poems in Hands That Break and Scar work as a sort of mosaic, vividly portraying a bi-cultural, working class—and often precarious— childhood in the rough world of California’s hot Central Valley. This community is as stressed as it is vital—and children become vigilant and self-sufficient at an early age. In one poem, two children lay down together between the short walls they’ve built with their own hands from dumpster bricks, where they “gazed at the stars, held hands, and felt at home.” In another, the speaker tells us that a tattoo artist’s hands “are the only things I think about, the only things I can picture.” "I long for the heat she’ll create,” she writes—"this tattoo proof that she touched me.” For this poet, human hands can be the source of both pain and salvation, and Chavez celebrates the moments of true joy and grace to be found in simple physical acts and otherwise ordinary situations. “I climbed the ladder,” she says, “reached out my arm/ placed my fingers on the fruit’s smooth skin,/ twisted it away from the stem/ and handed it down to my grandmother/ whose hair danced lightly in the breeze.” This is a stunning first book, filled with brilliant images, hard truths, and honest hope.
—Corrinne Clegg Hales, author of To Make it Right
Each word, each line in Hands That Break and Scar draws the reader into a trail of well-crafted poems with touching and tragicomic narratives. In poems such as the aptly titled, "Running Into Things,", Chavez uses an ironic but effective tone to describe an uncle's drunk driving accident: "it would only take a couple / hundred bucks to fill the hole." Likewise, other poems, from "Thirteen and Catholic," and "Neighborhood Watch," approach sensitive subjects in similar manner. The result is a collection that is not afraid to show the poet's sizable scars, even as it treats them at times like they were minor bruises.
—José B. González, author of Toys Made of Rock
- GenresPoetry
99 pages, Paperback
First published September 25, 2017
23 people want to read
About the author
Sarah A. Chavez
8 books18 followersSarah A. Chavez, a mestiza born and raised in the California Central Valley, is the author of the chapbook, All Day, Talking published by Dancing Girl Press (Dancing Girl Press, 2014) and Hands That Break & Scar (forthcoming, Sundress Publications, 2017). She holds a PhD in English with a focus in poetry and Ethnic Studies from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Whitestag Press, Connotation Press, The Pittsburgh Poetry Review, The Boiler Journal, So to Speak: Feminist Journal of Language and Art, among others. Her manuscript, This, Like So Much, was an Honorable Mention for the 2013 Quercus Review Press Poetry Book Contest. A selection from her chapbook manuscript All Day, Talking won the Susan Atefat Peckham Fellowship in 2013. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Marshall University where she teaches creative writing, Ethnic American literature, and is the interim coordinator for the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series. Sarah is a proud member of the Macondo Writers Workshop.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 9, 2019
"Hands that Break and Scar" by Sarah A. Chavez is a beautiful book. The cover has striking art of a woman in two shades, blue and red, possibly even two women depending on how you look at it. The artist Aydee Lopez Martinez calls this painting "Self Love" and it represents the duality of Sarah's experience in the world. She is a child born of a Mexican father and a white mother, in her biography, online at Stirring: A Literary Collection where she is an Associate Editor, she refers to herself as Mestiza, a root term meaning mixed, one of the threads in this well written book is identity .
Her writing puts us firmly in a place, most of these poems are set in the California Central Valley with vivid images. In the first poem, "The Mexican-American Parade," she writes, "Fresno closed off the streets from Tuolumne and "M"/south to Tulare and west to Van Ness." She introduces her dad, herself and her light-skinned sister, they "ate street tacos and churros, drank Horchata,/while people who looked more like my dad/then me walked around, rolling their Rs,/muttering, Está tan Caliente." (which translates to, It's so hot. There is a glossary in the back of the book with translations of Spanish terms.) It ends with her wanting a souvenir; the tee shirt her father selects has: "two eagles, their claws/clutching fast to flags—one red, white and green,/the other red, white and blue. Their beaks almost touched,/mirror images of one another,/reflections across water, across a border./The corners of the flags both dipped red,/bled into a pool beneath their talons, filling/the lower white space of the shirt. Esto es usted,/he said to me, pointing at the red pool/y usted deberia estar orgulloso." (Esto es usted means this is you, and y usted deberia estar orgulloso means you should be proud.)
Growing to a young adult, there is a poem titled "Quinceañera," the ceremony for young women who turn fifteen. In the poem "When My Sister Came Home Crying Again," there is intrusion of "some nosy pervert". She grabs the bat her father gave her for Little League and heads out the door. We imagine she is going to protect her sister.
There is grappling with boys and sex. In the poem, "Thirteen and Catholic," while being felt up she thinks, "I try to remember if this is a mortal or venial sin, and can't,/so I guess it must not be mortal, but it's possible that under/ the clothes is, so I stop his hand as it begins to slide beneath//my volleyball jersey." Another poem, "How Waitresses Walk Home in the Dark," where a woman coworker was mugged she shows how the women react to this intrusion: "Shelly carries mace" "Norma got a whistle," "Me though, on my break,/I just work on my fuck-you face,"
These girls are vulnerable. This author is strong, in the poem, "Doing Laundry," she reflects on getting her first bra, and the sex talk that came with it. And then the outcome of sex is right there, "My cousin Angelica got pregnant/when she was fourteen, and her feet swelled so big/she couldn't wear her Adidas anymore. She cried". This poem's shows in it's powerful ending that she has already made up her mind as she tells her friend, "I'm never going to be a mother, I said,/knowing neither she, nor anyone else, would believe me."
And here is a sample poem from the book:
Watching a Fire
The homeless man squatting
in the abandoned house next door
seemed to be building a throne
in the backyard. He placed debris
around him in a circle and sat stately,
straight-backed in the middle
of discarded toilet paper rolls, candy
bar wrappers, crumpled newspapers,
Big Mac clamshells, and empty
glass bottles of Heineken.
He was perfectly calm, lean, and tan,
nascent hair sprouting out the top
of his head like flame grass.
He spoke to invisible subjects,
whose eyes, like haunted mirrors,
reflected something awful.
From the pocket of his jeans,
he pulled a blank match book,
no name or address to hint
at where he'd been. He tore out
a match and slowly dragged the head
across the scratchy strip
on the back of the pack. Tucking
the light between the folds
of yesterday's Fresno Bee, the flash
blossomed like an angry tulip.
In the distance, sirens sang.
It is not the first fire she uses in the book to point to the fast endings of the end of life. In the poem, "What We Didn't Want," near the beginning of the book her mother shows her how to kill a bug using a can of Aqua Net (hairspray) and a lighter. The next day her and her friend go off to destroy by fire a long list of items despite being told never to do this without her mother around. The end of the poem reads, "It was so easy to get rid of what we didn't want, and afterwards/the smell of lighter fluid clung to our hair like perfume."
This is a strong book, I look forward to her next book.
Her writing puts us firmly in a place, most of these poems are set in the California Central Valley with vivid images. In the first poem, "The Mexican-American Parade," she writes, "Fresno closed off the streets from Tuolumne and "M"/south to Tulare and west to Van Ness." She introduces her dad, herself and her light-skinned sister, they "ate street tacos and churros, drank Horchata,/while people who looked more like my dad/then me walked around, rolling their Rs,/muttering, Está tan Caliente." (which translates to, It's so hot. There is a glossary in the back of the book with translations of Spanish terms.) It ends with her wanting a souvenir; the tee shirt her father selects has: "two eagles, their claws/clutching fast to flags—one red, white and green,/the other red, white and blue. Their beaks almost touched,/mirror images of one another,/reflections across water, across a border./The corners of the flags both dipped red,/bled into a pool beneath their talons, filling/the lower white space of the shirt. Esto es usted,/he said to me, pointing at the red pool/y usted deberia estar orgulloso." (Esto es usted means this is you, and y usted deberia estar orgulloso means you should be proud.)
Growing to a young adult, there is a poem titled "Quinceañera," the ceremony for young women who turn fifteen. In the poem "When My Sister Came Home Crying Again," there is intrusion of "some nosy pervert". She grabs the bat her father gave her for Little League and heads out the door. We imagine she is going to protect her sister.
There is grappling with boys and sex. In the poem, "Thirteen and Catholic," while being felt up she thinks, "I try to remember if this is a mortal or venial sin, and can't,/so I guess it must not be mortal, but it's possible that under/ the clothes is, so I stop his hand as it begins to slide beneath//my volleyball jersey." Another poem, "How Waitresses Walk Home in the Dark," where a woman coworker was mugged she shows how the women react to this intrusion: "Shelly carries mace" "Norma got a whistle," "Me though, on my break,/I just work on my fuck-you face,"
These girls are vulnerable. This author is strong, in the poem, "Doing Laundry," she reflects on getting her first bra, and the sex talk that came with it. And then the outcome of sex is right there, "My cousin Angelica got pregnant/when she was fourteen, and her feet swelled so big/she couldn't wear her Adidas anymore. She cried". This poem's shows in it's powerful ending that she has already made up her mind as she tells her friend, "I'm never going to be a mother, I said,/knowing neither she, nor anyone else, would believe me."
And here is a sample poem from the book:
Watching a Fire
The homeless man squatting
in the abandoned house next door
seemed to be building a throne
in the backyard. He placed debris
around him in a circle and sat stately,
straight-backed in the middle
of discarded toilet paper rolls, candy
bar wrappers, crumpled newspapers,
Big Mac clamshells, and empty
glass bottles of Heineken.
He was perfectly calm, lean, and tan,
nascent hair sprouting out the top
of his head like flame grass.
He spoke to invisible subjects,
whose eyes, like haunted mirrors,
reflected something awful.
From the pocket of his jeans,
he pulled a blank match book,
no name or address to hint
at where he'd been. He tore out
a match and slowly dragged the head
across the scratchy strip
on the back of the pack. Tucking
the light between the folds
of yesterday's Fresno Bee, the flash
blossomed like an angry tulip.
In the distance, sirens sang.
It is not the first fire she uses in the book to point to the fast endings of the end of life. In the poem, "What We Didn't Want," near the beginning of the book her mother shows her how to kill a bug using a can of Aqua Net (hairspray) and a lighter. The next day her and her friend go off to destroy by fire a long list of items despite being told never to do this without her mother around. The end of the poem reads, "It was so easy to get rid of what we didn't want, and afterwards/the smell of lighter fluid clung to our hair like perfume."
This is a strong book, I look forward to her next book.
November 20, 2017
This inviting collection reveals Chavez's bi-cultural coming of age in California. In her vivid and lucid poems, she lets us watch her "Constructing Childhood" with a searing wisdom. I will reread this book.
October 10, 2017
An amazing collection of poems that is at once heartbreaking and infused with love and care. Sarah A. Chavez has written about memory and nostalgia in fresh ways that continue, in poem after poem, to surprise and challenge.
January 30, 2019
This is a really powerful and aching poetry collection, really a coming of age tale told in verse (not to reduce it at all - that is a high compliment in my opinion) that speaks of cultures and times and loves and the heartbreaks between friends.
When The Heat Ends is a fantastic poem. My favorite of the collection.
When The Heat Ends is a fantastic poem. My favorite of the collection.
August 26, 2021
In moments that could create a victim, this narrative I is beyond powerful in her mind, her words and her actions. There is so much family, so much protection that this book feels conjured and conjuring, strength of the poet, strength for the reader.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews