Loves You: Poems

This third collection from Gambito (Delivered) is part verse, part recipe book. The recipes take on the quality of verse while the verse begins to take on the simultaneous invitation and instruction of recipe, with gorgeous, rich sensory details infusing both. Divided into sections headed by the five flavors (“Umami,” “Sour,” “Salt,” “Bitter,” “Sweet”), the book explores parenting, identity, and language itself. Gambito frequently deploys the cento form to canvass language and the way it can be used to fetishize, aggress, and degrade. The blunt power of the end-stopped line is alive in Gambito’s hands. In “First Born,” she writes, “Basically: my wish is that you are never, never pierced through the heart.” Elsewhere, the recipes are accompanied by emotional framing, such as “Watermelon Agua Fresca (For When You Need Me).” The collection explores the sensation of remembering as much as the memories themselves: the specific domestic nostalgia triggered by the scent of a meal or the gut punch of a repeated insult. The recipes feel like meditations, rituals in the midst of life’s chaos and unpredictability. A compelling book that only adds to Gambito’s stirring oeuvre. (Jan.)