In her titular poem bodies like gardens, which opens the chapbook, Montreal poet Salena Wiener shows us how gardens are fertile ground for capturing the unique experience of being a woman.
I feel weeds push
my back, grasp my hips
pull me under
I gasp for breath but
cough up mud
The beautiful, evocative, sometimes haunting poems in this collection will resonate with readers because they balance so carefully between strength and vulnerability—exploring pairings like he and she, water and salt, past and present, black dirt and blue skies, and pleasure and pain.
Wiener’s use of nature to tie these themes together and weed out space for women is at the heart of what makes this collection so powerful. Themes of love, trauma, mental illness, sexual violence, and anti-semitism are carefully cultivated in her work through pieces that demonstrate, in Wiener’s words, how “the female body holds these experiences over time.”
From anesthesia:
you slid a scalpel straight down
from my clavicle to my hip bones
laughed at my insides
then stitched me all the way back up
And from she:
a porcelain bowl:
delicate, feminine beauty.
perfectly crafted, holds
oceans, so many tears
you lose count.
Metaphors of nature and bodies abound and deliver unique insights into women as place, experience, and people. Each of the 18 poems captures a world in and of itself, connected by the feminine and dedicated to understanding the spaces women’s bodies can occupy when room is made for us to grow.
Bodies like gardens is sold through Cactus Press. Limited copies available.
