All the flowers kneeling

Review by Booklist Review

Tran's stunning debut poetry collection centers around trauma, both as the speaker experiences a particular incident and the ways trauma permeates a person's sense of self. One poem adopts the distant tone of a police report and demonstrates how the bureaucracy of criminal justice flattens and formalizes even the most awful experiences: "The form said Name of victim. // The form named me. // The form was a form of naming. // Naming gave me form." This event transforms and surprises the speaker: "as I relived my death in that room without sunrise / wasn't my desire for light but my desire for more darkness." When the speaker shares his story with his mother, it initiates an insidious, ouroboros-like cycling, since telling a story changes the storyteller, and as storytellers change, so do their stories: "Like Scheherazade my mother and I cleave to and from our story." Formally inventive, Tran includes a series of persona poems written from the perspective of cadavers used in sixteenth-century anatomical studies, some whose skin was supposedly used to bind books. He also introduces a new form, the hydra, which seeks to "resist as much as possible the psychological impulse to reach for closure and certitude." A darkly intelligent and exquisite debut.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

"My purpose is precision," Tran writes early in their vivid debut, and they fulfill this purpose, telling hard truths with clarity while exploring the legacy of American imperialism and the effects of sexual violence on the body, mind, and imagination. "What we made," they write, "what he made/ my body do with his body/ day and night, night and day, wasn't love./ I stayed to stay alive." Clarity, however, doesn't mean resolution. Tran's poems are curious and searching, especially as they wrestle with the contradictions of trauma recovery, a process that erodes the "membrane between reliving and relieving" deep pain. These poems embody a spirit of inquiry in their forms, too, many of which are Tran's own. Each provides a unique doorway into the subject matter, what Tran, in the book's notes, calls a way "to resist as much as possible to import, cleanly and clearly, lessons learned from one experience to another." As such, the entries posit that, for trauma survivors, the journey toward healing is rarely straightforward. These searingly honest, beautifully told depictions of survival and self-love will move and challenge readers. (Feb.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

This much-anticipated debut from Tran (the first Asian American since 1993 and the first transgender poet ever to win the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam) investigates American imperialism, sexual assault, intergenerational trauma, and the complexities of trauma recovery. The multi-part poem "Scheherazade/Scheherazade" explores the idea that in order to survive, victims must tell the story of their survival, and the poems here relating these stories are breathtaking, thought-provoking, and fearlessly honest, encapsulating tumultuous lows that will make readers shudder. In "Galileo," the speaker says, "I, too, had been taken apart./ I didn't want to be/fixed. I wanted everything dismantled and useless/ like me." While this pain is vividly captured, there is also an undercurrent of strength and perseverance within the voices, as evidenced in "Bioluminescence": "So far below, so far/ away from the rest of life, the terrestrial made possible by and thereby/ dependent upon light, I did what I had to do. I stalked. I killed./ I wanted to feel in my body my body at work, working to stay/ alive." VERDICT Readers will be sure to find connection and refuge within Tran's standout collection. Highly recommended for all collections.--Sarah Michaelis

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ORCHARD OF KNOWING Into the shadows I go and find you, gorgeous as your necklace of nine hundred and ninety-nine index fingers. All of them point at me as the kill to complete your mission: to return to your kingdom by returning to your king a thousand human sacrifices. You chase me. You swing your sword yet I remain beyond your reach. I'll surrender, I tell you, when you detach from your received idea of purpose. So you do. You set down your weapon. But I didn't mean the blade in your hand. I meant the blade in your mind. INCIDENT REPORT I had a form. The form said Name of victim . The form named me. The form was a form of naming. Naming gave me form. The form said Time of incident. Time could be measured. The Incident could be defined. Both had a form. Both were a form of naming. The form said Age . Age could be measured by Time. Age could be defined by the Incident. The Incident occurred on the night before my twenty-first birthday. The Time was night as night became night. The Incident occurred in my room at the Time. The Time occurred to me after the Incident. The form said Race or ethnicity . Both were constructs. Both marked me. Both had a form. Both were a form of naming. Naming was marking. I marked the form. (Asian. Bottom. 4 Now.) I was a construct. (Looking 4 Fun. No Strings Attached.) I was unremarkable. The form said Sex . The form listed my options. I had no option. I went along with the Sex. The Sex had a Name. (I won't say the Name.) Both marked me. The form said Affiliation . Everything started out fine. The form said Residence . I unlocked the door. I misread Affiliation as Affliction . The Name entered. I misread Residence as Residual . The Name kissed me. The form said Alcohol or drugs used at the time of incident . I was having a good time. The form said Relationship with the assailant prior to incident . I did the thing I was good at. The form said Type of coercion or force involved . The Name hit me. The form said Please specify . The Name choked me. The form said Ability to consent was inhibited by . The Name pressed a white towel against my face. The form said Please specify . The towel smelled like sugar. Please specify. An ice cream truck drove by. (Please.) I heard the song. SCHEHERAZADE/SCHEHERAZADE 1 Waking again to the spartan furnishing--brass knobs and coat hooks, curtain moth-gnawed and yellowing, plastic mattress atop a twin frame, photograph of me and my mother turned away, book from a class on empire and literature that told the story of a story- teller who evades the end awaiting her each morning by giving the king not her body but her imagination each night for a thousand and one nights--what humiliated me as I relived my death in that room without sunrise wasn't my desire for light but my desire for more darkness. 2 Except for the glow of distant ships nothing could be seen. My mother, staring into the dark, waiting for the light as she waited years ago for another ship to take her from her life, adjusted her glasses. The past came into view: line of women. Line of soldiers. Red sand beach. Sand red with blood. Waves racing in. A soldier. His rifle. My mother on her knees. Waves retreating. Once upon a time, she began. 3 In a version of the story there's no ocean. No waves racing in. No waves retreating. Their behavior neither the behavior of memory nor the past. In a version of the story there's no soldier. No rifle. No bullet wound marking skull after skull like a period at the end of a sentence. No final thought for each prisoner. In a version of the story there's no sand. No beach. No adjective to modify or justify the washed-away blood. No propaganda for beauty. No grotesque agenda. In a version of the story there's no line of women robbed of their womanhood. No prayers. No answering bodhisattva. No means to know if no answer is the answer. In a version of the story there's no ship. No going forward. No getting back. No inner compass or magnetic field or spinning needle or stars to tell my mother where she is. In a version of the story there's no story. No sleepless dawn. No twilight. Nothing happened. My mother disappears whatever blights her the way she now makes her living: altering and tailoring the story as though the truth were trousers to be hemmed. She changes and is changed by how she tells her story. There is no truth. Only a version. Aversion. A verge. A vengeance. 4 With him I had an audience. Both heads at attention. Ravenous. A kind of ravishing. Tell me you like it. I told him I liked it. Tell me how bad you want it. I told him I wanted it bad, maybe, because I did want, badly, to be remade, changed so thoroughly at the core of my being, the corridor through which he entered like a king, though he was far from a king, and in doing so took me, at least part of me, with him. I was willing by then, by force, to entertain my executioner. I stopped punching. Kicking. Resisting what I couldn't resist. What he wanted to hear I told him. I made my pussy talk. I found in violence a voice. 5 Across the table from my mother I filled two cups with tea. We sat in silence. We sipped in silence. Her silence demanding mine. Some suffering we'd rather not know so we don't suffer knowledge calling on us in the name of love to blame ourselves and to appropriate the pain because we think of pain and blame as objects requiring purpose and possession. That's not love. That has no name. We finished our tea. We set down our cups. What do you see? Leaves. Water. Waves. Ships. Bodies. Bullets. No shore. 6 Let me be clear. Inside this story is another story. The frame is a door. Behind the door is another door. Both the room and the king are literal and figurative. To use figurative language is to make an argument. Like Scheherazade my mother and I cleave to and from our story. Like Scheherazade ours is a story of refrain. The word refrain means not just resist but also repetition . Repetition is emphasis. The emphasis being the purpose for repetition. My purpose is precision. Even when I'm unclear I'm deliberate. When I'm deliberate I'm liberated. 7 Night after night I returned to the room. Windows closed. Drapes drawn. Neither spring nor starlight to ignite the air. Only his breath lingering on the pillowcase. His face in the mirror like the image of a swan in a lake. I was the lake doubling and doubting his image. Could I understand what happened if I understood him? Could I slake my rage if I knew what the next day had planned? To-go containers. Emails. Pills. Laundry. More laundry. At the foot of the bed, I decided there had to be a way out. There was the way out. SCIENTIFIC METHOD Of the books he wrote about me, my favorite is the book Master had bound with my skin. De humani corporis fabrica. Am I vain? Born poor. Illiterate. Oblivious to any life but this, never did I expect perpetuity. Never did I expect a man to want me the way he wanted me. Master didn't care how ugly I was. My nose flat. My thighs fat. My teeth the color of horse shit. Master dug me out from the ground. He took my corpse into his arms. He held me so close I forgot I was a body. I became his body of work. Biology. Physiology. Anatomy. Master, doubting the Old Masters, believed doubt could draw a new map to the interior. In his classroom at the university, Master had me undressed and laid on a table for his pupils to see. He descended from his dais with the dynamism of a god walking among his disciples. Whatever he dictated they scribbled on their slates, lapping his theories and thoughts like dogs lapping piss from a chamber pot. Some want to be holy. Some want to be human. Some want to believe the nature of the human revealed reveals the nature of the holy. As Master opened me--groin hard against my hips, hands in my guts--I opened him. I gave him nerve. Tendon. Muscle. Ventricle. Mandible. Sternum. Tibia. Atria. Labia. Every aspect of myself I hadn't resource or reason to fathom--heft of the mind, mechanics of the heart--he dissected. Documented. Paraded before his surgical circus. His spectators and skeptics oohing and aahing. Shuffling in their seats. Fanning back the heat. Their interest with what was found in me formed from their interest with what could be in them . . . I wanted to tell them that they weren't special. They had no soul beyond their investment in the function of the soul. Their gaze not absolute. Not pure. Not empirical. Only imperial. Impure. Approximate. I wanted to tell them that there was much they'd never know. They thought they knew what knowledge was. But knowledge was me: the edge of doubt and belief, of what persists Master after Master, reified and repudiated, preserved in a Providence library--air-conditioned, light-controlled-- touched and retouched, awaiting a new Master to approach the edge. THE NIGHTMARE : OIL ON CANVAS: HENRY FUSELI: 1781 Too hot to rest, I toss my arms off the bed. My night- gown wet with sweat. I feel you --a sack of scavenged skulls on my chest --sipping the salt from my breasts. Imp. Incubus. Im- pulse. You and me like a mare that must be broken in by breaking in- to. Tamed is how fire is by giving itself something to destroy: it destroys it- self. Who can deter- mine what's inside another? What is risked when we enter? Caliper. Forceps. Scalpel. Oculus. Perhaps you're the wilderness that waits with- in me. Perhaps an- other mystery, I open beneath you. Yoked. Harnessed. Paralyzed. At once a- wake and a- sleep. I nay. I knock over the kerosene lamp. Light of the rational mind snuffed. Shadow of shadows. Because I can't see, I sense. Your thumb thrumming my mouth. A command. Arch- angel. Vision of invasion. Insemination. Excerpted from All the Flowers Kneeling by Paul Tran All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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