Why Can't It Be Tenderness

Michelle Brittan Rosado is the author of the poetry collection Theory on Falling into a Reef. She is pursuing her doctorate in creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California.

Strikes just the right, clear note to place in the register of memorable debuts. Rosado's terrific new poems are salve and honey, even when the subjects of breaking and coming apart are at their beautiful core. Listen to the brilliant music of these pages."" - Aimee Nezhukumatathil, contest judge""Exhilarating, tactile poems- embodied, rich and full. Michelle Brittan Rosado is a visionary architect building and following interior maps within intricate landscapes, creating luminous revelation and deep calm. A book like this gives you your life back."" - Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Voices in the Air""The sense of a divided homeland- California and Malaysia- first splits then doubles the impassioned focus of these precisely crafted, complexly braided meditations on the self and family inheritance. Psychologically searing and yet always resonant with the world's pleasures, these poems unfold as an album of belated and tender homecomings."" - David St. John, author of The Last Troubadour: New and Selected Poems""An intimate book that draws the world inside its discoveries, both ordinary and extraordinary. Each poem offers us miracles by which we persist beyond the surface of language itself. Luminous in craft and intelligence, here is an original voice that questions, and ultimately celebrates, the profound wonder of our survival."" - Rachel Eliza Griffiths, author of Lighting the Shadow

• AcknowledgmentsOde to the Double “L”IWestern HistoryPastoral with Restless SearchlightHow to Use Microsoft Paint to Alter a Birth CertificateOnly ChildAmbivalenceDementiaAcross the Street from Foxboro Elementary School, an Inmate Escapes California State Prison SolanoVanishing ShipThe Elements Have Learned to SpeakTheory on Falling into a ReefCustomsBetweenPoem for My TwinOur Bodies Were Once the Color of Our MasksThe Hotel EdenAsking about My First NameDebtPoem for My MotherRootlessMy Father’s WorkThe Sky Will Look WhitePantunPoem for My Maternal GrandfatherRitualPhotograph Taken by My Paternal Grandmother on Her Honeymoon, 1944Elegy without TranslationMy Dead Live in Two RoomsIIThe Dissolution Paperwork Asks if I Need to Restore My NameLate SummerSea Shanty for the DivorcedThe Numerology of UsOld KnivesThe Tower DistrictThis Poem Wants to Be a HouseFresno Laundromat without Air-Conditioning in Late JulyContemporary ArtifactsPortrait of His Ex-Lover at a Yoga Studio, Downtown FresnoIncident between Two ExitsWhy Can’t It Be TendernessThe Sweetest Exile Is the One You ChooseA Name Made of AsterisksMistaken OdeLove after DentistryOn Waking When You’re Already LeavingWhile You Are GoneAn anchor in the shape of an ampersandVisitations with Unmarried SelfGlaucoma Test in the Post-Racial EraBreaking a Sugar Bowl the Morning after a Lunar EclipseLullaby in Which It Becomes Impossible Not to Talk about RaceNotes