Aria Viscera

Praise:

At the moment of self-realization, remain at the mouth of discovery. There is a palm, wielding and open. A wound. A Soothing. Retain some shard of yourself, then, pass through. Carter’s work is a transmutation of myths, the shimmering reality of hauntings, and the refraction of lineage that grooms young women into becoming mirrors. In a society full of magnets coercing the needle of our inner-compass, Aria Viscera is the exploration of the death cycle that comes after self-realization, the power of owning our own, and the rebirthing of ourselves into full-blooded meat.– Sheila McMullin, author of daughterrarium 

“You might hold more bravery / than me,” the speaker of Kristi Carter’s Aria Viscera muses to an imagined child. But it’s hard to conceive of much that is braver than these poems. In language both wild and precise, they press relentlessly into a tangled territory of mothering, inheritance, femaleness, power, and freedom. They challenge and question and upend, and in their understanding of family history they feel charged with an ancient, fierce, compassionate knowing. They are like flares sent up from a shadowed and necessary place, calling us close by their light, daring us to see. — Kasey Jueds, author of Keeper