Mónica Gomery :: Rage Hezekiah

​I first fell in love with Mónica Gomery’s work when her collection Here is the Night and the Night on the Road was released in 2018. Mid-hike, I sat cross-legged under a tree and wept over her book, in awe of what she had captured and conjured in its pages. In her rich and lyric new collection, Might Kindred, Gomery’s manipulation of language is striking. I am continually impressed by her ability to appropriate words and usage in new ways, evoking the unexpected. 

In her poem, “Now We Live Together,” she describes her lover making cabbage soup, saying:

…we knife it apart
and delight at its ruffled density. 
The cut open crossfolds
look like outlines of bodies
with v’s nested between legs.  

Reading these lines, I’m captivated by the intimacy and the disjunctive nature of her description, and taken with the unifying musicality of “knife,” “delight,” and “like outlines.” In the same stanza, “density,” “bodies” “v’s” and “between” echo a different soundscape. Gomery’s lush work surprises, evoking tenderness and weaving a rich tapestry of sound and image. Might Kindred radiates with power, celebrating and interrogating queerness, ancestry, and home.

​                                                                                                ~Rage Hezekiah

---