Description

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The poems of Sarah Cortez flex lean muscles to build lyric intensity and a gripping edginess often backlit by an incandescent, controlled eroticism. In many of the poems, Cortez reveals the hidden underworld of her fellow police officers, whose lives comprise the thin blue line and whose blood sometimes splashes and blackens on summer concrete.

Using what poet Naomi Nye has called 'an organic sense of narrative,' Cortez brings the reader close, very close, to the complex family histories that have made her who she is—a woman whose warm self-worth is tucked safely in her right front trouser pocket.


Aquarium

And what of the water?

A transparency
we swim through, lithe
white muscle,
the glide of fins.

We move and move
forever inside reflections,
refractions, ruckus
from the other side.

Our eyes never close.

We see you
coming.

We don’t think
we’re dinner.

About the Author

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SARAH CORTEZ, resident of Houston, is the author of two poetry collections, How to Undress a Cop and Cold Blue Steel, a finalist in the Writers’ League of Texas awards, and a memoir, Walking Home: Growing Up Hispanic in Houston. She is the winner of the PEN Texas literary award in poetry and the Southwest Book Award.

Praise For…

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“The poems in Sarah Cortez’s  Against Sky’s Warm Belly: New & Selected Poems are more than just documentation of a poet’s career. They are pure illumination. First page to last, new to old, these lines burn—with the friction of enjambment, the twisted expectations of language, the ignition of life. Saints, fishermen, medical examiners, lovers, killers, victims, cops, they all take their turn under the light of Cortez’s gaze here. Whether she’s describing the crispness of redfish flesh or ‘the mystery of a small grave,’ this poet’s work hits close to the core, always with force and palpability. As Cortez’s lovely poem, ‘Their Language,’ sings, these lines do carry away secrets. More than that, these poems carry secrets to us straight away, still glowing hot from the poet’s belly.”
 —Jack B. Bedell
author of Bone-Hollow True: New and Selected Poems
 
 
 

“Sarah Cortez's gripping Against Sky's Warm Belly: New & Selected Poems is a book many of us have been waiting for. For not only does Cortez's newest collection include recent, uncollected poems, but also dynamite poems from her earlier books, How to Undress a Cop, Cold Blue Steel, and Vanishing Points. This is a poet whose work should be required reading! Visceral, hilarious, and often downright terrifying, Cortez's poems are works of urgency, beautifully crafted doses of a reality we all must face, as does this brave poet, head on.”
—Wendy Barker
author of One Blackbird at a Time