Don't Get Your Hopes Up / Moon Woman

Poetry. Women's Studies. This is a book of two books of poetry that stand alone, yet are in conversation with each other. There are two front covers, as internally the books are back to back. DON'T GET YOUR HOPES UP is a collection of declarations rounding corners, running to embrace. These poems hold monsters next to notes. Together, they say, ''i build myself a deep nest,'' as though to imagine an ever-shifting space of both reckoning and healing in times of despair. It is precisely here, in ''the place just behind the eyes,'' that seeing becomes a political act, as clear as the avowal to never look away. The poems of DON'T GET YOUR HOPES UP work through nothing less than magic. MOON WOMAN begins ''beholden to a body,'' at once lyrical and sharp, an incredible collection of poems that span intimate terrain to collective memories. With deftness, Fatima floats, submerges, and comes up for air. Her words, like testimonies, skim horizontally across the surface of her skin. There's a tenderness that is also critical and self-aware, calling for witness after trespass. Sit with MOON WOMAN under a tree. Breathe in these poems, as she whispers, ''feel most free beneath my gaze,'' and then exhale.