REFUGEE

Uschuk’s poetry collection calls out authoritarianism and social injustice.

This moving set of poems offer messages of hope as it addresses timely issues. It’s divided into four sections—“Skull Song,” “Axis,” “Liquid Book of the Dead,” and “Speaking of Angels and Ghosts”—and deals with a broad spectrum of hurt, including that felt by refugees, victims of racism, people struggling with cancer, and victims of domestic abuse. The opening poem, “A History of Morning Clouds and Contrails,” exemplifies Uschuk’s distinct style, melding political outcry with a deep immersion in nature. The landscape she depicts is one drained by its struggles: “Feel the warmth of an otter’s last dive / before ice takes the river. Police sirens / fade like contrails across the exhausted heart of this land.” Meanwhile, poems such as “Intraperitoneal Chemo” offer an affectingly visceral tableau of cancer treatment: “the port sewn / onto my lower rib to pour toxins into my emptied womb.” Despite such challenging themes, a note of positivity rings true throughout, with one speaker declaring, “I will not border on hysteria but will work on a poem to feed all of us.” One of the most powerful poems, “Cracking One Hundred,” ingeniously juxtaposes the migration of the monarch butterfly with the emigration of people from Central America. Its opening line provocatively reads, “Near the border, preschoolers worry about butterflies. / How can they fly over the wall?” The poem memorably closes with an image of butterflies arriving from Mexico on the White House lawn, “on bright rose petals tended by hands / the same color as earth that nourishes them.” Uschuk’s writing addresses worldwide injustices, although many salvos are clearly aimed at the Trump presidency, with elegant, razor-sharp lines such as “this poem doesn’t have anything to do with comb-overs / or glacier eyes or gray suits signing laws a jaguar wouldn’t stop to sniff.” Still, this is also a spellbindingly compassionate collection rooted in the belief that redemption remains possible: “Earth carries us, heals our wounds as we spin on the hub of desire.”

A mordantly tender triumph rich with natural imagery.