Good Monster

With an equal dose of fatalism and dark wit, Antigua captures the bodys capacity to cage and cradle sadness. Diannely Antiguas Good Monster grapples with the body as a site of chronic pain and trauma. Poignant and guttural, the collection voyage[s] the land between crisis and hope, chronicling Antiguas reckoning with shame and her fallout with faith. As poems cage and cradle devastating truthsa stepfathers abusive touch, a mothers soft harmthe speakers anxiety, depression, and boundless need become monstrous shadows. Here, poems dance on bars, speak in tongues, and cry in psych wards. When God [becomes] a house [she] cant leave, language becomes the only currency left. We see the messiness of survival unfold through sestinas, a series of Sad Girl sonnets, and diary entriesan invented collage form using Antiguas personal journals. At the crux of despair, Antigua locates a resilient desire to find a love that will remain, to feel pleasure in an inhospitable body and, above all, to keep on living.