Your Body Is War

Your Body Is War contemplates the psychology of the female human body, looking at the ways it exists and moves in the world, refusing to be contained in the face of grief and trauma. Bold and raw, Mahtem Shiferraw’s poems explore what the woman’s body has to do to survive and persevere in the world, especially in the aftermath of abuse.

A groundbreaking collection, the poems in Your Body Is War embody elements of conflict, making them simultaneously a place of destruction and of freedom.

Swallowing Suns    
Your Body Is War (I)     
Madhouse    
The Art of Invisibility    
The Suicide Chamber    
The Tree of My Deaths    
Behind Walls and Glass    
Your Body Is War (II)     
Ash and Blue    
Body of Punishments    
Like a Lover’s Quarrel    
Water    
The Curse of Ishmael    
Black and Blue    
Death by Trains    
The Memory of the Body    
Your Body Is War (III)     
Genesis    
The Old Tree    
The Wrong Kind of Dream    
Your Body Is War (IV)     
Journey with Dante    
At the Mad Man’s    
Water Dreams    
The Body Book    
Conversations with Self    
The Yellow Woman    
The Fruit Mother    
Ghost Procession    
Your Body Is War (V)     
Acknowledgments