x/ex/exis: poemas para la nación

by Raquel Salas Rivera

Written in the early days of the rise of world-wide fascism and the poet’s gender transition, x/ex/ poemas para la nación/poems for the nation accepts the invitation to push poetic and gender imaginaries beyond the bounds set by nation.

From teen dysphoria, to the incarceration of anticolonial activists Oscar López and Nina Droz Franco, to the entanglement of church and state, these poems acknowledge the violence of imposed binaries. For Salas Rivera, the x marks Puerto Rican transness in a world that seeks trans death, denial, and erasure. Instead of justifying his existence, he takes up the flag of illegibility and writes an apocalyptic book that screams into an uncertain future, armed with nothing to lose.

In today's post-disaster Puerto Rico and a world shaped by the recurring waves of an ecological apocalypse, Salas Rivera’s words feel visionary, mapping a decolonizing territory, a body, and identity of both soil and heart. 
 

Genres: Poetry, Queer

112 pages, Paperback

First published August 17, 2021

Reviews

[Ivana]

Este sólo lo recomiendo en español :))

[Camille Dungy]

In the first poem in this Academy of American Poets Ambroggio Prize-winning collection, lions turn to snakes turn to spiders. As their cages and tanks grow smaller, the captive animals keep finding new ways to escape. The poems here resist subjugation, colonization, dismissal, and destruction. The poems here, and their animal bodies, spill from a militarized beach—where everything from shells to seagulls have been shot. They defy what would silence and deny them. Growing from strength to strength, they transmogrify.

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

[Isaac Salazar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great free form and accessible poems. Loved the extended metaphor of the ribbon, as well as the poet’s linguistic flexibility in translation & contesting & reclaiming language through particular words & phrases. Amidst a critique of the State and PR’s colonial history within and against fascism, there’s also moments of (queer) love that became a kind of respite for myself and I could imagine for the poet themselves.

[Sofia Malo · Rating 5 out of 5]

a collection of poems that says “i see you, i love you, never change. you are a force to be reckoned with” to latinx non-binary/trans folks. a collection of poems that piss on colonizers and kiss queer brown folks - who could ask for anything more?

[Keefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

“in another reality, i am my cat,
who is 30 cats.
she fears coming out to eat because
she is 30 cats and each one of her
is a fissure in the structure that separates rowhouses.
with time, she is alone.”

These poems bite.

[Wyrd Lea · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite poetry collections up to date. The play with language, imagery, and surrealism will appeal to other surrealist poets. Has translation from Spanish to English, so no worries about fluency.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some poems stuck with me and some went over my head.