Every morning a foot is looking for my neck - bonita lee penn

Sometimes the cadence of our experiences cannot be expressed with traditional language and one must find a pace and rhythm that bellows what the mouth cannot.

Bonita Lee Penn has done so with her chapbook of poems, Every Morning A Foot Is Looking For My Neck.

Whether it is the thumping of a heart or a black body hitting the ground prematurely, her words elegize the cries of those who have left us in a violent frenzy and bring to light an all too familiar ache with wit, fire and a haunting truth.

In this striking debut collection, Penn is unrelenting in the pushback against a world that tries to force us to press our- / selves into the recesses, into shadows / of our skin.

to lay low, to be silent, to / shrink.

disappear.

These are vibrant and brilliant poems.