Auto/Body

<p><b>The poems in <i>Auto/Body</i> are an inexhaustible engine--sometimes a body sometimes flesh--a sensual exploration of what it means to repair to remake to keep going even when rebuilding feels impossible.</b></p><p>From the greased-up engines of auto body shops to the innumerable points of light striking the dance floor of a queer nightclub <i>Auto/Body</i> winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry connects the vulnerability of the narrating queer body to the language of auto mechanics to reveal their shared decadence.</p><p>Behind the wheel of this book is an insistent humorous voice whose experiences have lent themselves to a deep intimate knowledge of survival driven by the pursuit of joy and exalted pleasure. Raised in and near auto body shops Vickie Vértiz remembers visiting them to elevate the family car to examine what's underneath to see what's working and what's not. The poetry in this book is also a body shop but instead we take our bodies identities desires and see what's firing. In this shop we ask: What needs changing? How do our bodies transcend ways of being we have received so that we may become more ourselves?</p><p>From odes to drag to pushing back on the tyranny of patriarchy to loving too hard and too queer to growing up working-class in a time of incessant border violence and incarceration this collection combusts with blood and fuel. In other words Vértiz writes to dissolve a colonial engine and reconstruct a new vessel with its remains.</p>