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.