A review by hilaryreadsbooks
More Sure by A. Light Zachary

4.0

Poems on queerness and neurodivergence, on knowing the ever-changing self. A. Light Zachary speaks to moments of knowing and unknowing (and the constancy of moving from one to the other)—from the beds of lovers, to performances under a mother’s gaze, to the shadows of expectations unfulfilled / never to be fulfilled, to the refusal of the coyote to be caged. In these poems: to home is to know the home may move, may change, may take a long time to come to be, may be torn down by those who fear the home-builders. And yet, as the speaker says, “every time I build a house, I build it better.” They lean into society’s fear of mutability, face it head-on: “I contain / multitudes. Fear me.”

Some of my favorite poems. “Friday nights at the non-binary drive-in,” where the speaker imagines movies on time travel, on body snatchers, on community that speak to queer experiences. “To recite each morning,” where the speaker shares a tender mantra: “Unmask myself. / Unman myself. / Unname myself. / Unchain myself” and ending simply with “Free myself.”

[Thanks to the publisher for the gifted copy!]