Trace evidence Poems

In this exquisite and affecting collection, Shanahan (Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing) explores longing and alienation in queer and mixed-race contexts. With provocative and arresting language, he examines the ways in which white supremacy and heteronormativity make those who do not fit neatly into categories feel like outsiders in their own lives: "To speak at all/ I must occupy a position// In a system whose positions/ I appear not to occupy." He writes of the subtle complications in his relationship with his Moroccan mother, who, unlike Charif, does not consider herself Black: "Over there, she was sahrawi, asmar,/ Even abid. Over here, Black.// To her, Black meant African American,/ Which she was not// ...Hence the pocket of nowhereness." "On the Overnight from Agadir," the haunting poem at the center of the book, he details a visit to Morocco, during which he was involved in a bus accident that broke his neck, a near-death experience that caused him to examine his priorities and serves as a chilling symbol of the trauma surrounding his racial identity and heritage. Out of pain and loss, joy, sex, state-sanctioned violence, and nomadic longing, Charif constructs a comprehensive identity and an artistic vision that is dynamic and brilliantly conveyed. (Mar.)

With lyrical precision, Shanahan's second collection (after Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing) burrows into the difficult questions of how one might live, and why. Amid the overlapping and ambiguous contexts of biracial identity, nationality, family, and sexuality ("To speak at all/ I must occupy a position/ In a system whose positions/ I appear not to occupy), the poems build toward something of a unified theory, rejecting the simplifications of clear labels or false distinctions, embracing questions and multiplicity ("his kin/ Being caught, yes, but not between,/ Rather inside the two, as we are/ Inside our bodies/ Gnarly and awkwardly the same"). A long poem, "On the Overnight from Agadir," anchors the collection, detailing a life-threatening bus crash in Morocco, and it serves as a visceral inquiry into mortality and existence ("Where does the inquiry begin Does it begin in my particular body in my particular mind/ Does it begin centuries before me Does it begin in my mother Does in begin in all these places At once"). VERDICT Shanahan's new work meets anguish and pain directly and ultimately proposes a tender and expansive possibility: "If you are on this earth/ You are of this earth." Emotionally vulnerable and insightful; a work in which all readers likely will find something of themselves.--Amy Dickinson