Phantom Tongue

by Steven Sanchez

Phantom Tongue explores identity, homosexuality, heritage, and language. Written with vibrant detail and surgically precise word choice, the poems in the collection navigate through the construction of a person's identity by various experiences and circumstances. Some poems are about the narrator’s Mexican heritage and the confliction of not being able to understand the language of his parents and relatives. Others show the struggle to come to terms with sexuality in the context of heritage and religion and the expectations of male gender roles. And others interact with the larger societal struggles looming around the narrator’s struggle, such as a poem about the Orlando nightclub shooting. Phantom Tongue presents the danger of love, the bittersweet beauty of loss, and the power of human striving, often encapsulated by some form of expression—artistic, linguistic, romantic, or otherwise.

"Exiled from the cultural language of his Mexican ancestors, longing for the private discourse of queer desire, the young speaker in Steven Sanchez’s Phantom Tongue imagines—and then inhabits—a wondrous space where expression is tactile, intuitive, and intimate. What a heartfelt debut and a wound-healing testament to the fragile but resilient body, its whispered stories."
—Rigoberto González

Genres: Poetry, LGBT

81 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2018

About the author

Steven Sanchez is a CantoMundo Fellow and a Lambda Literary Fellow. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Fresno State University. His first full-length collection, Phantom Tongue, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2018 and was selected by Mark Doty as the winner of Marsh Hawk Press’ Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award. His poems have appeared or will appear in Nimrod, Poet Lore, Crab Creek Review, Tinderbox, The Blueshift Journal, and others.

Reviews

[Barton Smock · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t know what poetry should do; this language, third language, I was born to miss. But there is a work being done by Steven Sanchez in the book Phantom Tongue that, embedded in miracle, outgrows witness. That you will lose your voice reading. That calls echo the pearl of ache, and names chasm as the twice present history of seek and summon. Body as hyphen, body as bridge. Touch be a landmark. Dear poem, do these. See in your dream a puppet keeping safe a compass. Lead from the dream the angel confused by hunger.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about identity, language, queerness, love, and acceptance.

from Imagined Letter for My Father from his Father: "Abandoned by your mother, you wander. / I'll follow you, a ghost inside you own // reflection. I'll save the suns that settle / inside my bodies: water, glass, // and every surface that holds warmth. / Lap every river with your clumsy // tongue. You won't forget / you came from México, even when // my face sets inside your memories / like the words of my language // you almost learned, everything / hidden behind your pupils, nights // you'll carry the rest of your life."

from The Anatomy of Your Voice: "Whenever you speak / remember to inhale // as if through the gills / on either side of a shark— // seven and seven, two halves of a sonnet / that can turn an ocean into breath."

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some fave poems from it: “Thunder,” “Even If There is No God,” "The Gunman," & “The UpStairs Lounge.” Ruben Quesada recommended this to me, and when I entered my manuscript into Sundress's open reading period last year, I bought this as my entry fee, and I'm glad that I did! Looking forward to Sanchez's future work.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tense read, which I mean as a compliment. There is danger everywhere in this book – danger of the author's sexuality being found out, his father's violent rage, even the danger of his own skin color (this can be felt most acutely in the poem “Approaching El Arco,” in which the speaker is stopped and searched for the "crime" of having brown skin near the California-Mexico border). Even seemingly innocuous poems have visceral, body-horror descriptions. I opened to a random poem to find an example and landed almost immediately on the line: “the rattle of bones inside your voice.” Nothing is safe here. This is a tight and beautiful collection.

[Maya Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen Sanchez immediately pulls you in with raw words and vulnerability one should often crave while reading poetry.

[Meaghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

[Isaac Salazar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such strong conviction and attention to language about difficult conversations like queerness and family. I have walked in Mister Sanchez’s footsteps and felt every syllable.