ANOTHER WOMAN

A confessional book of poetry by a millennial woman.

Bonner shares her experience as the “other woman” in this poetry collection. Though the married man with whom she becomes entangled remains a mysterious presence in the book, the poet lays herself bare in these pages. Bonner describes watching the object of her affection swim, “loose sand clinging to your calves, the amber current / rushing past the quiet, silver stones, you flare against the dark / like my heart” (“Black Mountain, Highway 9”). Soon in deep, she finds, “Our hunger is never enough.” The author is surprisingly clear-eyed about the nature of the affair, and its potential harm; after her lover says he doesn’t want to hurt her, Bonner responds, “You do, / just on a smaller scale, as I intended.” Inevitably, the affair ends, and the poet seeks comfort in other men’s bodies. With time, “There is sun again. / There is luck again.” Ultimately, she realizes, “alone I am witness to my wonder.” In the course of the work, Bonner also channels several famous female figures (Lot’s wife, Delilah, Dido, and Aphrodite, among others), allowing each to tell her own story. Though these poems are stripped to the bone—a few are as brief as two lines—they pack quite a punch. The author’s sensory-rich descriptions of the natural world thrum with energy, from “A thrash of moonlight, / its quiet kick” to “the tumult of stars overhead radiant / and fanged,” to the way “rhododendron click their curled leaves together / in the spangled shadows, a staccato of sound.” Her tone is brash yet vulnerable in lines like, “Tell me to hope, / I won’t believe you. / Tell me to wait like a woman / anyone would recognize, / walking into the world with her palms open, / accepting nothing but the fire” (Inventory of Shimmers”). However, Bonner’s language may be a bit much for some readers in lines like, “I am learning to enunciate even with your cock / crammed in my face.”

A seductive yet brutally honest poetry collection about infidelity.