The poems of Sarah Cortez flex lean muscles to build lyric intensity and a gripping edginess often backlit by an incandescent, controlled eroticism. In many of the poems, Cortez reveals the hidden underworld of her fellow police officers, whose lives comprise the thin blue line and whose blood sometimes splashes and blackens on summer concrete.

Using what poet Naomi Nye has called 'an organic sense of narrative,' Cortez brings the reader close, very close, to the complex family histories that have made her who she is—a woman whose warm self-worth is tucked safely in her right front trouser pocket.


Aquarium

And what of the water?

A transparency
we swim through, lithe
white muscle,
the glide of fins.

We move and move
forever inside reflections,
refractions, ruckus
from the other side.

Our eyes never close.

We see you
coming.

We don’t think
we’re dinner.