Unslakable

by Rage Hezekiah

Startling and brutal in its clarity, Unslakable takes on multiple violences lived in an individual body – the trauma of a childhood with an alcoholic parent, the intergenerational inheritance of slavery and racism, the echo of every heartbreak. This is a collection brimming with quiet, the kind of raucous quiet full of unspoken things. Hezekiah's poems don't look away from painful memories, instead facing them head-on with unremitting tenderness.

Genres: Poetry

33 pages, Paperback

First published March 18, 2019

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and how was I to say no to a book with that cover? Plus, it's from Paper Nautilus Press, and we tiny presses with marine invertebrates for logos need to stick together!

I really enjoyed this small collection. The poems are biographical for the most part, and witness intersections of trauma and fear, but also joy and magical thinking and resilience. Hezekiah navigates the world as a queer woman of color whose parents were given to fits of rage, but also someone who makes out in a walk-in cooler, who dissects owl pellets, who smokes joints with her mom.

A poet whose name I will keep an eye out for in the future.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very satisfying evolution of the speaker in this chapbook. The poems seem to move chronologically throughout the speaker's life, beginning with a memory of age 6 and ending as an adult who has made a journey away from the alcoholism and fights of her childhood home life, and toward a discovery of her sexual/natural self. My favorite poem is Dozen, and I love the double entendre in the last lines of February Cove (the last great year of our imagination.), Psilocybin (I want it all for as long as it will last.), and Life Science (I'll never know, I thought, who's capable of what.). Looking forward to Hezekiah's full collection, Stray Harbor.

[Pax · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains the sort of beauty and power that I crave in books of poetry. Rage Hezekiah has made a junkie out of me. I gifted one of these poems to and English teacher as a retirement gift and she framed it (which is impressive because she didn’t like me very much, I think she cropped my name and note off of the bottom of it) but hey, if these words could be an olive branch between me and her, who knows what else it could do. All I know is I’m thrilled to see what’s next.

[Abigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something about reading a book after hearing some of the poems in it read out loud that juts hits different

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely amazing collection of poems. Hezekiah has great imagery, great thematic explorations of pain, loss, suffering, joy, connectedness, and freedom.
https://youtu.be/Img9q9D4cF4