Purchased as a part of my AWP buying spree, and picked up for April in Arabia and Read the World 21 challenges, I had no context or familiarity with the author going into this. As a result I did feel a bit like I was floundering a good part of the time. Despite or because of this, my favorite poems from this collection tended to be those that evoked a dream-like quality, like "A Light in the Water"

The dreamers are sleepers fully dressed under the water. Bubbles are a sign of life, as of the body's decay. We can't be sure which. They sleep on the stage and their hands don't move, and the waves delude you into thinking their fingers stir in weak and final motions."

The author is a Kurdish Syrian poet currently living in France, and these poems are built on the bones of loss and war and emigration and mourning. ( )