Water I Won’t Touch

Candrilli (All the Gay Saints) delivers a candid and tender collection that explores a personal history fraught with addiction and a father’s violence while examining the aftermath of a double mastectomy. These reckonings question the burdens and beauty of the body: “I am trying to change the future/ my blood has written for me.” As the body and heart transform, the boundaries between the ecological, medical, and emotional collapse like overturned soil. “Though I am concerned for the earth’s rapid/ erosion,” Candrilli writes, “I have done it to myself. I have cleaved whole mountains from/ my chest and sent them to soak in an offshore landfill.” The collection has a noteworthy sestina and sonnet crown that showcases Candrilli’s powers as a poet. Amid the cruelties of country and misogyny, the aching, boundless love of speaker and partner forms a steadfast haven and offers a hopeful future: “All of my scars have become sails/ that can be used to sail anywhere.” Candrilli’s poems generously and poignantly invite readers to share in the promise “to try and live/ and live and live/ until the earth caves in.” (Apr.)