Maxanax Chempapísi / Bloodwriting (en Inglés) - Deborah A. Miranda

In Maxanax Chempapísi / Bloodwriting lyric poems exploring Esselen words and concepts traverse a supporting cast of prose poems about contemporary life as a queer, Indigenous recovering academic. Deborah A. Miranda witnesses the lives of women who are lovers, mothers, daughters, sisters, and grandmothers caught in a chain of ongoing apocalypse that stretches from the colonization of North America to the current Anthropocene.

These poems are small but potent ceremonies that center relationship as medicinal. They speak of the ugliness of genocide, substance abuse, environmental destruction, and homophobia with searing fury. They linger on the sacred powers found within a river—"A web of fireflies weaving constellations in the alder's branches"—or the wonder of "The first woman / who stole my heart / rose up / from the earth / like a creation story." Throughout this collection, images weave connections between women's bodies and the moon, bodies and earth, bodies and constellations that surround us. Esselen, Miranda's Indigenous language, acts as a bridge that translates some of these ancient struggles and insights into contemporary images.

This collection resists the separation of the body, the spirit, and the sacred. It seeks a reunion of true relationship in the midst of chaos and uncertainty. Miranda balances praise for the burning—but still beautiful and holy—world and grief for the loss of beings and places that cannot be recovered.