I Always Carry My Bones

by Felicia Zamora

The poems in I Always Carry My Bones tackle the complex ideation of home—the place where horrid and beautiful intertwine and carve a being into existence—for marginalized and migrant peoples. Felicia Zamora explores how familial history echoes inside a person and the ghosts of lineage dwell in a body. Sometimes we haunt. Sometimes we are the haunted. Pierced by an estranged relationship to Mexican culture, the ethereal ache of an unknown father, the weight of racism and poverty in this country, the indentations of abuse, and a mind/physicality affected by doubt, these poems root in the search for belonging—a belonging inside and outside the flesh. This powerful collection is a message of longing for a sanctuary of self, the dwelling of initial energy needed for the collective fight for human rights.

Genres: Poetry

90 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2021

Reviews

[Michelle | musingsbymichelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a breathtaking collection of poems! These poems will remain a searing reflection of the years of the Tr*mp administration especially through the perspective of a person of color. What stood out most to me are the lines about the concentration camps (yes, I said what I said). Beautifully and painfully, Zamora's words bring recognition to the atrocity of parents being separated from their children at our borders. This is a must-read--- even if you aren't necessarily a poetry person.

[Ashlee Bree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whetted. Powerful. Searing. Indelible. Though not what I would consider easily digestible poetry, this collection foments. It awakens. It shoots a disembodied chorus of awareness across synapses as if it were lightning.

Employing both brutal metaphor and description, it knocked my head open with the blunt force of its themes, my eyes watering at every fractured punch of imagery that was bound up in eclogues of racial ideation or reality. I was unable to read this without feeling the thumb indentations of oppression, of abuse, against my windpipe.

Written in a surging splintered style, and slamming with verbs that contort into nouns resounding with an inability to encompass it all, the fragmentation of otherness, of belonging, Zamora weaves a comprehensive body narrative into this collection of poetry which emphasizes the restrictions and curtailment immigrants and people of color experience today as well as have endured throughout history. It's a deeply personal account in addition to it being a cumulative and collective one. It digs into present crevasses like a vaccine needle, echoing out from beneath a graveyard of crunched bones and disregarded flesh.

The language the author uses perforates, permeates--it exposes issues of exclusivity among minority groups like a craniotomy.

Zamora describes how doors are shut in black and brown faces repeatedly, successively. The way each slam can and does resonate in a cracked whip of warning then stings like a sutured wound the nation keeps on opening. She emphasizes that borders cannot weave a person into being because they're imaginary, because they're nothing more than a societal construct of obstruction and limitation we continue to feed with our sour speech, with our breaking down of choices and rights, with our selective erasure of others' voices.

She also points out that foundations matter. That generalized strokes of definition or vocabulary will always be inadequate. That migration has been carried on our backs, traipsing along in song that unravels generation after generation. More than anything, though, she portrays the undulating tension that exists between growing out of something you are but cannot change, like ancestral ties or color or ethnicity, and growing into something you can, like being the kind of person who can learn to venerate the wonder of diversity.

This is poetry with a penetrative POW of meaning! Read it for yourself and see if it doesn't haunt, doesn't stoke. Be prepared for it to root deep, embedded, through your bones.

Thank you to NetGalley and University of Iowa Press for the ARC.

BOOK BLOG

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection spins around the axis of the body as metaphor and boundary. This takes place through four connected systems: the person, the person plus one, the political, and the natural world.

"Let's say your body's a caterpillar, an accordion in scooch / among branches"

Each of these poems reminds the reader that we are all separate, but connected. We share and inhabit the same, but separate, spaces. We breathe the breath of one another and move through the world shaped by our neighbor's bones and muscles. But, our body is our own and only sacrosanct space.

"After shuck & caw, light / slats between each vertebra, bone illuminate

The shape of these poems varies. Some slam-like in reading, others more prose, and an occasional straight up story. There's a unique anatomy to the line breaks and the language. Occasionally this evokes the feeling of being small and vulnerable while a larger body envelopes you, blocking out full comprehension, the way a parent might shield you from tragedy.

"You turn / your chest from me & behind ribs I become / more hummingbird than human"

These poems felt like a grappling from a place of grounding within the only thing we truly know, within ourselves. Our bodies which hold so much memory. If these bones could talk, I suppose. And often, what's outside of our bodies is outside of our control, and this creates a tension. A vulnerability. A poem.

"If you draw a line in the sand, the surf swallows / what you have done; disobedient tide song"

And that tension is where we find ourselves and our agency.

"We call these passages, pupils."
"We call these passages, witness."

Thank you to NetGalley and University of Iowa Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Rach · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW. I am just so floored by this poetry book. This is a phenomenal poetry book. Like everyone needs to read this.

I highlighted SO many lines and sections and entire POEMS from this book because I kept feeling my eyes widen and just kept feeling punched in the gut over and over.

Language and words. Just wow.

A smart, often brutal, collection of poems that I will absolutely reread and recommend to so many people.

[☽｡⋆ Shells (jlreads_) · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 ⭐️

Thank you NetGally for letting me review this book.

This collection isn’t for me. I HOPED. WANTED. TRIED to love it or at least enjoy it I DIDN’T.

I did see some that catches my attention however it was just for a moment and I was ended up bored. I didn’t care in any of it, I’m so sorry.

[bell ⋆｡°✩ · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely stunning and incredibly compelling book of poetry. I read this by the water, and the details of bodily thirst, our cells deprived of their want of water, was just gorgeous. I am really obsessed with the parallels between nature (specifically water) and the body, particularly in a feminine sense. This hit deep. The language throughout is unexpected and soul crushing, and every poem had me thinking Wow, that was really good immediately after finishing. Can't wait to read this book again when I have a physical edition.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read. It took me some time to read this collection of poetry which really surprised. I definitely don’t think this is the type of book that should be read in one sitting. I loved that the poems were descriptive. The themes are Mexican culture, family, racism, and poverty. Some of the poems were incredibly powerful.


Thank you NetGalley for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

the poet's voice sees the way a microscope sees -- the way her poetry weaves anatomy, biology, and the molecular brings to light the relationship between the tangible self (the body, skin colour, how one looks) and the intangible identity (what does it mean to be of a certain race in a certain land/context).

to quote poetry foundation: 'Zamora sees the body as a living archive and an aftermath, a way of rendering evidence of racial harm and migrant experience that is embedded in the lungs, ribs, and clavicles.'

to be honest i've never really read poetry like this before, and can say that it has widely expanded my anatomical lexicon -- but in all seriousness I found this collection to be thought-provoking, both cerebral and visceral, and eloquent without being fluffy

[Mar at BOOKIVERSE · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

GLUING TOGETHER SOMETHING VALUABLE AND REWARDING THAT IS VERY FRAGMENTED

This was like putting together a 10K piece puzzle.

I'm totally exhausting but I keep going because I KNOW the big picture. I’ve seen it myself (I’m Hispanic, I’m an immigrant, etc.)

I keep going because I know it's important, relevant, and very valuable.

I want to see it come together.

BUT it’s SO FRAGMENTED and the edges are so rough, it's VERY hard to get through it.

I hope not but I'm afraid that some readers who, unlike me, haven’t seen the big picture may be too confused by these fragments to foresee the reward.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poetry collection wasn't bad by any means, it just wasn't my style. I'm not a huge fan of prose type poetry, I love my line breaks. However, I did find many poems to be poignant and well crafted, and there were a few that stood out:

- Bodies & Water
- Motel
- Dear Coyote (the entire series of poems with this title)
- Prayer to Consciousness
- Veins & Ghosts & Other Circulatory Systems
- Invisibly, Yours
- Beautiful Fault

* Thank you to NetGalley and University of Iowa Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Camille Dungy]

The body is alive in these poems. The body is also, sometimes, dead. The body is the human body, and the Palo Verde beetle’s, the desert, a sheep’s, a Galápagos tortoise’s, the hummingbird’s, the coyote’s, many coyotes’, human and inhumane. The body connects us to what we always have been and what we want to be and never can be, what we reach for, and what we are. Who is “we”? These poems want to know the answer to that question, too.

Review published originally with Orion Magazine: https://orionmagazine.org/2021/09/ele...

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and University of Iowa Press for this ARc ebook in exchange for an honest review.

This collection was moving and enlightening. I believe that I Always Carry My Bones needs to be added to any course that talks about immigration and colonialism, even if excerpts are used. This was incredible, and if I taught older students, I would find a way to incorporate this into my curriculum.

[Charlie Orlando Leppert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The imagery in this collection of poems is incredible. It's an evocative and prescient work that blends the political and the personal seamlessly. Some of the poems read almost like a logic puzzle, and Zamora's use of language is incredible. Though it may not be a book I recommend to a beginning reader of poetry, it's certainly a rewarding read.

Thank you to NetGalley and University of Iowa Press for providing me with a free digital galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Victoria L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The language was incredibly rich. The arc of the poems felt rather solid, not a poem out of place, with a strong emotional axis, something I was not expecting from the name and the first few poems. The exploration of the trauma in brown bodies is profoundly haunting, even if sometimes the language was a bit too obscure. It's been a while since I've been so invested in the twist of language of a book. Definitely worth a read, even beyond the crucial, urgent matters it deals with.

[Christen Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searing and urgent. These poems expose boundaries and inequities. Give voice to the unnamed and the unseen. A rallying call to voice and action.

America, Let Us Pause
“Because poetry requires & yet cannot encompass. Because we must gather voice. Because a tired soul is only one yet many hold galaxies’ weight. Because words might. Because voice. Because voice. Because voice. Voice.”

[Ashley Dang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it. Just read it. This an amazing piercing strong poetry collection that just left me speechless.

*Thank you Netgalley and University of Iowa Press for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[Seher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you, NetGalley for this ARC.

This was not a nice or an easy read. I'm giving it two stars only because I can see that there is a difference of taste here. I just didn't like it.

[Marla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Massachusetts Poetry Festival 2025

[julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

how briefly you hover weightless, a shadow not meant for keeping

[Michelle McGrane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Felicia Zamora’s ‘I Always Carry My Bones’, winner of the 2020 Iowa Poetry Prize, is composed of three parts: ‘In Breach of Etiquette’, ‘Weight of Indentation’, and ‘Where the Carriage of My Cells Catch’.

Zamora lived as a child with her white grandparents in Iowa. “It was a place where other people told me I was disgusting before I could discover myself.” It was here her grandfather said, “You’ll never amount to anything, you worthless little spic” as in her powerful poem, ‘Motel’, she thinks ‘ I had done/ something wrong to never/ warrant celebration”.

She uses her body, tissues, bloodstream, organs and cerebrum as a pivot through which she explores an estranged relationship to Mexican culture, the ethereal ache of an unknown father, the indentations of abuse, and a mind/physicality affected by doubt, these visceral, breathtaking poems rooted in the search for belonging.

As a Latinx woman historically invisible and derided within the United States, these astonishing poems speak to a long history of political injustice, systemic racism and oppression towards people of colour and migrant people.

In poems she makes reference to the caging of immigrant children at the Texas-Mexico border as well as the drowning deaths of two Salvadoran border crossers found washed ashore on the banks of the Rio Grande River.

Her poetry calls for collective action, immigrant’s rights, social justice and makes a claim for the sanctity of all humans.

In a letter to Oskar Pollack on 27 January 1904, Franz Kafka wrote: “A book must be the axe which smashes the frozen sea within us”. After sitting with the poems in ‘I Always Carry My Bones’ I feel hypothermic and submerged up to my neck in water.

Felicia Zamora is a poet, educator, and editor currently living in Ohio. She is the author of six books of poetry and an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati and the associate poetry editor for Colorado Review.

A huge thank you to @NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.