We Contain Landscapes

This reflective debut collection from Humienik begins with a letter to the reader introducing the writer as “the queer daughter of formerly undocumented Polish immigrants, from a country that’s been taken off the map.” In the breathless, dreamlike sequence that follows, each poem bleeds into the next as they trace that journey. Anchor imagery is distilled through the speaker’s dismayed sense of self as an “anchor baby”: “I look up how to say/ anchor in my first language. Once I didn’t need/ to search. Kotwica. My mama gave birth to me/ a month after my parents arrived in the states. Nie mówiła wtedy po angielsku.” Tying herself to “the good girl mast,” she studies her “first language” on Saturdays, and travels from the shore of Lake Michigan to visit relatives in Poland. Eventually, she masters adult survival skills: “Bury the anchor/ Go to the lake/ Arrange the fragments.” Humienik addresses poems to lovers and friends (her “beloveds”), many of whom are also immigrants. Having moved beyond scribbling hearts on fogged train windows, she bonds with the American landscape: “When I am one day buried in the dirt, I offer my frame, tissue, heart. You didn’t ask me to live on like this. I’m asking you” (“Magnolia”). Raw and intimate, these are refreshingly candid poems. (Mar.)