Even Shorn

Spilling over with a dark energy, Duarte-Gray’s debut elevates rural dialect and stories into something ancient, brutal, and magical. The collection’s title is inspired by the passage from Song of Solomon 4:2: “Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn.” Yet Duarte-Gray reframes this description of female beauty into something potentially violent: “time I lost my teeth I didn’t think to mourn them/ though the ache swung my jawbone/ far across the ripplegrass.” She dwells in the hidden spaces of family lore, domestic intimacy, and the natural environment of Western Kentucky. Her poem “Cutter Quilt,” referring to a worn-out quilt that will be cut apart, mirrors the subject in the form of extraordinary fragments of text: “here in winter/ darkness finds/ my hand trapped in the velvet/ of the sumac and the velvet/ of the antler.” A quilt pattern, “Drunkard’s Path,” appears later in the collection: “It was/ Wint come drunk he/ struck her with the pan as flour/ flown to the roof holes and/ snowed on me his fists falling.” Withholding punctuation, Duarte-Gray’s poems put their “nut-hard finger to the frets” and move briskly, quickening with the use of enjambment. This memorable debut is filled with profound depth, tension, and delight. (May)